The semester is coming to an end so my Internship Course is nearing conclusion. Fortunately my internship is not near ending, in fact I am going to work FULL TIME this Summer for CED3! Next semester I expect to have a schedule which will allow me to work a lot more than 24 hours. I want to keep on at CED3 even after graduation, for I've found a place where I really enjoy the work and feel I can make a significant contribution.
The internship class has a requirement that I gather documents and media for a final presentation. This has allowed me to reflect on these last three months and go over what I've done.
Fortunately our task management spreadsheets have a record of my completed and penfding work so I can just make a print out of that. I have much to report on about my internship as I've learned so much, discovered so many things about websites, corporate group work and NPS itself. I feel myself having changed as an employee.
Some things I've learned:
Team work. I thought that what it meant to work on a team was that you have people helping you to check and make sure that no mistakes get out. I learned a much more important aspect of teamwork is that you make sure to do perfect work so your team mates can trust the product you hand them and not have to go over it.
Design/code view. I started out working in Dreamweaver in the design view. Oh boy I can format text and paragraphs and cut and paste, align, tab, do normal word document editing. I found out this was very wrong as my websites got returned to me full of errors and broken links and the underlying code was a disaster. It turns out the code/text translation is not perfect, and for what is going out to be read on multiple browsers it is most important that the HTML code view be formatted correctly.
Adults can relax and also work hard. All the jobs I've had in the past I felt like I had to work very hard and fast to impress my boss and keep my job. I only found out that it's OK to be careful and methodical here at NPS. Not that it's OK to lag, but this work requires a lot of careful consideration and should not be rushed. This has been a tremendous relief to me and made my work experience a highly rewarding one.
I'm good at what I do. Although I have a lot to learn, I have studied desktop publishing extensively and practiced it personally, professionally and at school. I find I have just the mindset to carefully code and format websites and other media. I like it and my results prove I am getting the job done right.
I can perform well at work while also maintaining 4.0 at the University, with almost twice a full load! I am there, I've turned a corner and find all my work easy and enjoyable. I hope to carry on my work at NPS and at School with even increased success!
Thank you for reading.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
What I do
This week has been typical, although I didn't have several fun side jobs I got a lot of work done on my course migrations. I finished a migration from the previous week, I completed an entire new migration, and I got a significant way into a new migration.
Each course migration offers design and programming challenges. As each course has a unique structure, words for sections, categories containing different items, types of media, location of media and format of media. For instance, the majority of courses have the heart or the meat of the course in an index of modules which contain the instructions, assignments and reading for each week. Different instructors call these different things. Work of the week, module index, course work, assignments are some examples of how this section is titled. Assignments is also a different category where you go to view and submit assignments. The work of the week may be under a button labled work of the week or it may be under a link titles course work or modules or something similar. My job is to form the new site into a coherent and logical site while maintaining as much of the original structure and naming as possible.
Sakai looks much different from Blackboard so each finished product has a clean white modern look to it. I find this very satisfying. Conversely Blackboard pages look old fashioned and gray to me. I get to "clean up" and modernize every site and I feel like I'm improving them, for look and clarity and functionality. The requirement for our department to perform any course work is if we will be adding value, and I honestly feel I add a lot of value to my courses.
Each course migration offers design and programming challenges. As each course has a unique structure, words for sections, categories containing different items, types of media, location of media and format of media. For instance, the majority of courses have the heart or the meat of the course in an index of modules which contain the instructions, assignments and reading for each week. Different instructors call these different things. Work of the week, module index, course work, assignments are some examples of how this section is titled. Assignments is also a different category where you go to view and submit assignments. The work of the week may be under a button labled work of the week or it may be under a link titles course work or modules or something similar. My job is to form the new site into a coherent and logical site while maintaining as much of the original structure and naming as possible.
Sakai looks much different from Blackboard so each finished product has a clean white modern look to it. I find this very satisfying. Conversely Blackboard pages look old fashioned and gray to me. I get to "clean up" and modernize every site and I feel like I'm improving them, for look and clarity and functionality. The requirement for our department to perform any course work is if we will be adding value, and I honestly feel I add a lot of value to my courses.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Regular Schedule
So each blog entry I'm supposed to conform to a format where I report on how much I've worked this week and what I worked on.
Let me just tell you, each and every week I work 24 hours, (3) eight hour days.
This is because I go to school 2 days and so i work on the three remaining days. This summer i will work Full Time, 40 hours per week. All the time I have free from school i want to work. I really like my job and i need to make money.
What I work on varies from week to week, but my main task is migrating courses from Blackboard to Sakai.
This means actually making new websites for each course on Sakai, and linking in all the documents, presentations, graphics and outside links.
That's my main job, and in between I perform a variety of tasks for the Instructional Designers.
I edit audio tracks, record transcriptions from videos, edit title clips and content of videos, edit power points, add animations, check transcriptions for accuracy, help with film productions and many other things.
Every week brings new challenges and surprises.
Let me just tell you, each and every week I work 24 hours, (3) eight hour days.
This is because I go to school 2 days and so i work on the three remaining days. This summer i will work Full Time, 40 hours per week. All the time I have free from school i want to work. I really like my job and i need to make money.
What I work on varies from week to week, but my main task is migrating courses from Blackboard to Sakai.
This means actually making new websites for each course on Sakai, and linking in all the documents, presentations, graphics and outside links.
That's my main job, and in between I perform a variety of tasks for the Instructional Designers.
I edit audio tracks, record transcriptions from videos, edit title clips and content of videos, edit power points, add animations, check transcriptions for accuracy, help with film productions and many other things.
Every week brings new challenges and surprises.
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