Debrief from Emporia State presentation

Well, as often happens with technology there was a glitch Friday evening. Really there were several. My PPT file was over 8MB and took a long time to load into Adobe Connect/Presenter. There were audio issues with almost 20 seconds of delay. We opted to "punt" and try again on Saturday.

Saturday went much smoother. It was a unique experience for me, presenting without any audience feedback. I never knew what the response was. So, it was gratifying to receive these two emails from Rob, the instructor:

That was really an incredible presentation. The students were very interested in your topic and talked about it quite a bit afterward. Two students in particular were looking forward to this topic (the others didn't understand the Semantic web initially) and were disappointed that the opportunity to hear you "almost" eluded them on Friday. We were so glad you accommodated us.

You weren't aware, but the Library and Information Management Dean happened to pay an unannounced visit to the class just before your presentation. She stayed and watched. Off microphone she was telling the students that your information/presentation was perhaps one of the most important things they could learn in the entire course, and even the foundation for other courses. Thought you would be interested.

Me a guest lecturer?

I got an email last week from Dr. Robert Gibson with Emporia State University who is teaching a graduate class on information transfer (Library Science.) He had attended the online virtual C2C conference last spring and asked me if I would be willing to replicate my presentation for his class via our web conferencing system - Abode Connect. I was flattered and agreed. I will be doing that this Friday evening.

I'll post how that goes later.

SIDLIT Evaluation

It has been awhile since I entered anything new in this blog. I am keeping busy with work, teaching a Java class, and taking the Research Methods course to finish up my degree.

I did finally get the feedback for my presentations a SIDLIT. Only 6 people completed the survey. I was encouraged by the informal responses I received at the conference, however. I had one attendee approach me to tell me that she had no idea what Web 3.0 was about and had just about reached her limit of "seat time" when the presentation began. She said that she really enjoyed the presentation and felt she had learned a lot.

One of the technical support team at JCCC told me that he was pretty savvy about the semantic web but learned a few things and thought I did a good job of presenting a complex subject so that it was easily understood. This informal feedback, where people go out of their way, is exciting for me.

EventName The Semantic Web (Web 3.0) - The Platform, Promise & Potential

Jim Van Horn
Excellent
3
Good
3
Fair
0
Weak
0

Trying to get Scholarly Activity Funds

I sent an email last week asking Marcia Clements if there might be some funds available to help pay for my trip to the MoDLA conference. She was out of the office, but when she got back she forwarded my email to Dr. Geiger. It seems that Dr. Geiger is the one who is now managing the SAF. But, she is out of the office until the end of July and they don't know what funds will be available for the new fiscal year.

It has become a catch-22. The instructions state that the application must be submitted 10 working days before the trip, but the manager, Dr. Geiger, is not available to receive the application or approve the travel.

Marcia suggested I submit my expenses retroactively and just see if it will be approved. Since I am travelling at my own expense I really do hope that it gets approved.

SIDLIT Acceptance

I just got these two acceptance announces:

Dear Jim Van Horn,
We have reviewed the proposals submitted for the 2009 SIDLIT conference and are pleased to tell you that your proposal "PowerPoint 201: Beyond the Basics" has been accepted for the program as a concurrent session to be held at Johnson County Community College in the Regnier Center on July 30 - July 31, 2009.

We have reviewed the proposals submitted for the 2009 SIDLIT conference and are pleased to tell you that your proposal "The Semantic Web (Web 3.0) - The Platform, Promise & Potential" has been accepted for the program as a concurrent session to be held at Johnson County Community College in the Regnier Center on July 30 - July 31, 2009.

I will need to apply updates to the Semantic Web presentaion as there seems to be a major news release almost weekly.

The PowerPoint session will be a hands-on session so I need to plan the whole lesson and decide if I want to create a CD with an initial vanilla presentation. Various features of added to improve the presentation.

Results from TechNet Conference

I got the results from the TechNet presentation:

	Excellent	Very Good	Average	Poor	Rating Average	Response Count
The Semantic Web	100.0% (2)	0.0% (0)	0.0% (0)	0.0% (0)	1.00	2

Molly

Downloading Webcasts

Today I found a series of Webcasts on the Semantic Web sponsored by Semantic Universe. There are 7 so far in the series. Each one is about an hour in length. I am looking forward to viewing these presentations even though most of the information will be beyond the intro-level that I am providing in my presentation.

SIDLIT

I just submitted my presentation purposal for this summer's SIDLIT conference. I will be using the basic format from TechNet and the C2C video conference, but there are new, exciting developments being announced every week. The "semantic snowball" is starting to roll. Nova Spivack's definition of Web n.0 seems to be the most accurate I have seen:

• Web 1.0 was the first decade of the web (1990 - 1999)


• Web 2.0 was the second decade of the web (2000 - 2009)


• Web 1.0 was the first decade of the web (2010 - 2019)

Nice Email Regarding My C2C Presentation

I received the following email from one of the participants in the C2C VC last week. I have included an excerpt below:

Jim,


I very much appreciated your presentation last Friday at the C2C States hook-up. I thought your explanation was the clearest I had ever seen about all that is available on the web. Your graphics were clean and clear and I hope you will be able to make copies of them available to us. It seemed to me that there was more to that set of graphics than you could get aired Friday morning, so I would appreciate if you could send the complete folder. I am the newest of neophytes in this business and I am fascinated by all that can be used successfully.

I sent her the handout that I created which was an outline of the presentation including links to all the applications and additional information. I also attached a copy of the PPT, although it really needs narration to make a lot of sense.

Post Video Conference Reflection

It was an interesting experience. Attendance at all locations was sparse. We had the largest crowd at UCM due to the vocal jazz ensemble that followed me on the agenda. The reactions of these young college students to the somewhat techy information was exciting.

As with most first-time adventures, the VC was not without its glitches. The other sites were all using VC classrooms and PolyComm equipment. Mike Jeffries had the additional challenge of setting up a "mobile" site in the Union using a differnt vendor's product - LifeSize. We experienced a video dropout when switching back and forth between the PC to the camera. Another challenge was with the backlight coming from the windows causing the automatic feature of the camera to average the light input and create a very dark picture. Since most of the really important information came from the PowerPoint presentation on the PC, it was not a big issue.

Barb Carder from Extended Campus suggested that I submit my presentation for the Missouri Distance Learning Association (MODLA) Conference. It's too late for this year, but maybe next.

I am really glad that I used links to the various slides rather that just creating a sequential presentation. I provided more flexibility. As time was short, I was able to eliminate some of the non-essential slides without have to "click through" them. However, they asked me to email the presentation to share with the participants and I'm not sure they will be able to effectively navigate through the slides. I'll work on the presentation a little before I send it.

Checking out the equipment

I spent about an hour today working with Mike Jeffries checking out the VC equipment. One challenge will be setting up the equipment at the remote sites so that the image is large enough to adequately display my PowerPoint presentation. I will be using a wireless mic and I intend to use my wireless mouse as a "clicker" to progress through my presentation.

I might do some more work on the slides to ensure that the text on some of the captured images is large enough to be read.

Evaluation From TechNet

I contacted Molly Mead to request the results for my presentation from their evaluation survey of the TechNet Conference. She responded that she would be able to provide them but that she hadn't received very many of the surveys back yet.

Updating My Presentation for Video Conference

Friday afternoon I met with Mike Jeffries to check out the Polycom video conferencing equipment. We talked about camera placement and if I needed to be "miked". We are going to try just using the Polycom microphone since I can project pretty well. I realized that the output is going to be either the camera view of me speaking or the PowerPoint presentation. That caused me to do some changes to my PowerPoint presentation. At TechNet I as able to walk over to the projection screen and point to areas of interest. With the VC set up I will need to add these "pointers" to my PowerPoint slides.

I spent about 4 hours on Saturday updating my slides.

I discovered an interesting feature with Adobe Reader. I added a link in my PPT to a PDF on my hard drive -"Microformats Cheat Sheet". In order to make it readable for the presentation I needed to "Zoom" to 200% or more. Adobe Reader "remembers" the changes that you make to the zoom setting and using [Alt] + the left or right arrow key you can return to the previous view or proceed to the next view. I'm going to try it out and if I become comfortable with it I will use this feature in my presentation on Friday.

Later this week Mike is going to do an equipment check with the other campuses that are hosting the VC. I hope to be able to use that time to test my media to be sure that everything works the way I have planned

Ready Set Go

I received tentative approval to begin working on my Ed Tech Internship under option 2 - Conference Presentation. I will need to begin collecting all my thoughts and artifacts related to my presentations this Spring.

The bulk of my work was in creating the Semantic Web presentation for the TechNet conference on March 12th. This presentation was different than the usual "How To" workshops because the semantic web is still developing. I had presented a paper in October of 2007 at the AACE E-Learn International Conference and wanted to leverage that information in my new presentation.

Some of the challenges that I foresaw were:

• Presenting a very technical topic to a semi-technical audience


• Creating interest in an evolving technology that is not fully implemented


• Since this was my first time to attend the TechNet conference, knowing what to expect in the level of web skills from the attendees


• Creating a "take-away" document that would provide sufficient structure and references even though my PowerPoint presentation would not be in outline/bulleted format

In addition, I wanted to utilize some of the principles and techniques for effective presentations that I had been reading about in Gar Reynold's and Nancy Duarte's books (Presentation Zen and Slide:ology)

• Minimize/eliminate bullet-points


• Use slide transitions that aid in unifying the presentation


• Consider the effects of color selection


• Only use 80% of the allotted time - no one ever complained because the speaker went to short.


• Recapture the audience's attention every 10 minutes