April 30th

This week was dedicated creating Ideas for the lab next week and working on the printer tutorial. The tutorial is almost done, I will finish it this weekend and email it out to the group to make revisions.
The ideas that I have for next year are:
-Creating Learning contracts that hold students responsible for their individual projects.
-Lab involvement in campus activities at the beginning of the year such as GSA cookouts etc.
-Continuing the Blogging next year
-Having lab employees gear their lab work towards professional development (roundtable discussion, poster presentations, journal articles, etc.)
-Maybe have past lab GA's come in and explain the position one day during the training.

April 23rd

This week I gave a brief tutorial to the lab staff on the operation of the poster printer. I have also had a few opportunities to use the poster printer for SOE staff members. There are a variety of formats that a poster can be saved in, and I think that I have found a way to make a uniform print method. My tutorial is now in development.

March 12-15

I have spent this week installing printer drivers on various computers. I have installed color printer drivers on the Hallway PC that is attached to the TV. I have also installed the poster printer drivers on Laptop 1, 8, and 11. I have also installed it on Mac #1. The poster printer is now operational. On Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning, I was trained by Butch Hilton on the capabilities of poster printers. It is a bit tricky, but I am in the process of making a tutorial. In the mean time, If anyone has questions, please schedule a time to sit down with me and I will be happy to help.

April 5-9

Using the suggestions provided last week I have attempted to complete the audio intro to the blog page. I have recorded an audio intro using audacity. I have also attempted to place this uploaded recording on my page. I have used various players and uploaded the file to various servers. I thought that It may be best to use scholar as the host, because each of us already have a scholar page. I am working with David to determine if the file should be saved as a streaming podcast or if it can be a basic file. We have tried both ways, and I am not sure why the file is not playing, but I will continue to work with it. Blogger is giving me an error message Once I find a formula that works, I will create a Camtasia tutorial that will provide step by step instructions on how to record, upload, link and embed the audio file to the page.

I also ran across an interesting article that discusses the use of Blogs to enhance reflection and Community of Practice. I will email this article to each of you, because blogger will not allow me to upload the article. This article could be useful for AECT.

March 29- April 2

During this week I have experimented with adding an audio introduction and media player to the blog. I have only been able to add songs to the site (I got the idea from Andy's page). I want to use audacity to create an audio introduction, however the blog does not recognize the mp3 format. I am attempting to find a way to develop or use an existing html code to embed a player within the site. The mp3 players that I have found only play music files found online. I am thinking that I will need to create a subsequent page to house the audacity recording so that it will be recognized by one of the existing players. If someone has any ideas on a better way to add an audio recording to the site, I am open to any suggestions.

During this week I have also began to work with the poster printer. I have loaded the paper into the machine. I have loaded the software on the Dell computers in the production lab. However, I am having quite a bit of trouble getting the network to recognize the printer. I have loaded the printer software to laptop #1. I am currently exploring the parameters and printer capabilities. Please let me know if you have a printer that you wish to have printed, and I can use your project for practice.