The Townsley Tribune

A week or so ago, I wrote about how our face-to-face meeting was canceled. Along with the cancellation came the challenge of missing out on the opportunity for some of us to present our software reviews. We were issued a challenge by our instructor to, if possible, present our software review online instead. I have to admit that I was a bit unsure about this idea at first. Deep down, I wanted to video tape my entire presentation or do a voice over to supplement my PowerPoint presentation. Then...reality set in. This was going to be an awful lot of work! Instead, I opted to use my web authoring skills to create an outline of what my presentation might have looked like. I posted all of my handouts in pdf format, created a small movie to illustrate how the software works and attempted to put my would-have-been spoken words into writing. Our initial software reviews were to be 10 minutes in length, but I'm guessing the typical person reading the online version will need to spend longer than 10 minutes to read it. This is the challenge of a virtual environment - transforming the spoken word into a different, but yet still deliverable, format. Spoken word would have done the trick, but most likely it would have taken more bandwidth and sure more time. I guess my "old school" web authoring software (no Web 2.0 here, folks!) had to do the trick.

Check out my software review and let me know what you think...

Posted by Matt at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

(Image courtesy iowaroadconditions.org)

How ironic! In my last entry, I wrote about the ice storm that hit Iowa and how it wasn't going to keep me from doing my school work. Well, I received an email last night that our face-to-face meeting which was scheduled for tomorrow is now canceled. Schools across Iowa canceled classes today due to the blizzard-like conditions. News reports tell me that some parts of Iowa may have received upwards of 20" of snow. Here in Cedar Rapids, the snow keeps blowing. While we may have only received two or three inches, the visibility caused by blowing snow continues to create lackluster road conditions. The red roads in the picture above indicate 'travel not advised'; pink means the road is 'completely covered'; orange 'mostly covered' and yellow 'partially covered.' I think Ann made the right move by canceling tomorrow's class. I was really looking forward to seeing everyone, but I would have dreaded the drive.
There you have it, class has officially been 'canceled' and arrangements must be made to somehow hand-in our digital stories (postal mail) and present our software reviews (video tape?!?) as well as review for our midterm exam (WebCT discussion). Flexibility is the name of the game here in the distance education world. Until next time....

Posted by Matt at 05:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)