As an educator and curriculum developer I believe my next step is to work towards my Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.  I have over five years managing projects, but without the certification it is very hard to move up the ladder.  I have been researching programs and think that I am going to go to Villanova University and attend their PMP master’s certificate program.  The course is three classes and lasts for six months.  At the end of the classes you take the PMP exam ($500) and if you pass you are certified.

I don’t know if I will ever be able to quit going to school.  I think that it shows my children how important education is and that you are never too old to learn.

Recently I have been working on a project to use Microsoft SharePoint as a platform to build a training database.  Again I am not a computer person, but even I can realize when the wrong application is being used on a project.  The more I dug into the problem the more I realized that one section of the company had already sold upper management on this and it was going to be very hard to change their mind.

Yesterday I was asking a SharePoint developer/Administrator questions and before I know I had a group of about seven people around me braining storming the project.  They all had good Ideas on what type of application I should use (not SharePoint) and where to get.  I soon realized that you can’t or shouldn’t approach any problem or project in a bubble.  I knew what I was trying to accomplish and what I was told, but brining new people and their opinions into the discussion shed new light on the problem.  I think sometimes we believe that we have all the answers, but in reality I think showing problem and the solution to as many people as possible is the best thing to do.  If the solution is solid, it will give you reinforcement.  If your solution is week it could save you time and possibly your reputation.

So between my job and this degree plan I have experienced more technology in the last two years than I probably would have in my entire life.  I have come to the realization that there is very little difference between the business and education worlds.  No one really wants to change, they want to keep what they have as long as it works and will usually only change if they are forced to.

I have noticed that a major theme in brining technology to education is that no one wants to change and teachers are holding on to old technology.  The same thing happens every day where I work now.   We have a shared network drive that everyone loves to use, but that we have been trying to get rid of for several years.  The thought process was that everyone would move their information to Micro Soft Share Point and they would disband the share drive.  That hasn’t worked out very well, because everyone is comfortable with keeping documents in a folder.  Last week I went to a 40 hour class on Share Point and learned firsthand the power of this program.  It is amazing if you use it to its full potential.

I believe that in order to advance technology in any organization you have to have a very smart and level headed person pushing at the top.  Technology is changing so fast that no one can keep up and if you try your organization will be in a constant state of change.  Supervisors have to take their organizations needs and find the best tool to meet them.  I think this is the same with technology in schools.  Teachers and schools have to find a tool that meets their needs and not just throw technology into a school to be 21^st century.  The more I read the more it seems that schools are trying to use technology as a band aid to fix the Millennial Generation problem.  Technology is great but everything and everyone in the organization has to be ready to go for it to work.  Build the education program first and then find the technology to support it.

When I read the description of Milestone 3 I immediately decided that I would use Prezi.  Being a very studious person, I watched the tutorials before I dove in and began creating my presentation.  From the very beginning I was very visually impressed with the visual aspect of Prezi, but I was having a hard time getting a full grasp on the real pros of the application.  Like anything new it takes a while to grasp ins and outs of an application.  The frames and paths were a confusing at first, but once you get used to it flows like any other presentation tool.  I will have to say that I probably spent a good six hours trying to put a presentation together.  The more I messed with it the more I wanted to do!

It wasn’t until I was almost completed with the presentation (5 hours) that I actually felt like I figured out the real appeal / use for Prezi.  It has characteristics of PowerPoint, but not the limitations of size and storage.  In my opinion Prezi has huge potential for an organization such as the military where instructors and organizations are spread out across the world.  The online aspect of the applications gives instructors a virtual workspace for collaboration that is available at work or at home.  It is also very easy to use and visually it is very attractive (sexy).

The more I play with Prezi the more I love it!  I think it that Prezi has the potential to transform the learning space in several different ways.  First I like that a presentation is stored online, but can be downloaded if needed.  The Marine Corps has been hindered by the limited space and restrictions on “share drives and share point” for as long as I can remember.  With Prezi all presentations are stored online with the images and videos embedded into them; something PowerPoint does not do.  We have six academies all over the world using slightly different presentations for the class.  Prezi would eliminate the need for more than one presentation, while also offering the instructors a way to collaborate on the same presentation.  It almost seems to me like Prezi is a blend of wiki and PowerPoint (WikiPoint)!

Second, I like the fact that you are not limited to an 8 ½ X 11 workspace.  Unlike PowerPoint, Prezi does not limit the designer to an 8 ½ X 11 slide, they have an endless palette that can be used to organize a presentation any way the designer chooses.  The organizational options that Prezi offers are what really make it unique and transformative in my eyes.  Information is information, we can’t change how math problems are solved or the history of WWII, but we can change how we deliver and organize it.  I think that this is where Prezi shines.  It offers the designers and instructors the options to organize and display information any way that they see fit, while keeping the students involved.  All in all I thought this was a very exciting and unique tool for displaying and organizing information.

When I began instructing PowerPoint was king and it was almost  mandatory to have a presentation to give a class.  Now everyone is preaching, “death by PowerPoint” and moving to alternate teaching styles to avoid it.  Technology is moving away from standalone software and computer storage, to an online world.  Classrooms are no longer limited to face to face, now they can be located in different parts of the globe and linked by technology.  Collaboration and presentation are the tools to link them together and make them more than just a discussion board.  In the future only tools that can link people and information together into a collaborative environment will succeed.  While I don’t believe Prezi is the end all be all to the future of education, I believe it gives teachers an innovative tool to connect their classroom, while also captivating them visually.

The presentation I have created can be viewed Here.  Be aware, this presentation is on Law of Land Warfare and is fairly graphic.  Be aware there are several pictures and videos of the My Lai Massacre, which show pictures of the villagers killed by the U.S. Army.

I have found the implementation of simulations into courses both exhilarating and exhausting.  Students, as products of our video gaming society, embrace learning through simulations and have a very short learning curve.  Last semester I took Nicholas Burbles’ class where I was introduced to Machinima.  Initially, I didn’t see the value in it.  However, after doing more research into Machinima’s educational applications, I began to see it as a means of expanding the training power of simulations.  Michinima allows video software to capture, edit, and polish simulation sequences; it allows creation of instructional videos.

For my milestone #2 project, I decided to use VBS2, CamStudio and Jaycut to make a Machinima training movies.  As I stated above there are two ways that I think this technology/media will aide my students and instructors.  The first way is by replacing  the Academy’s current PowerPoint presentations with Machinima movies of VBS2-based sequences.  For the past two centuries the Marine Corps has been using symbols to identify people, billets and equipment—see the fire team formations graphic above.  Twenty-first century students want to be taught with 21^st century technology and techniques.  Utilizing Machinima will allow me to create images of actual Marines rather than relying on pictures and symbols.  I will also be able to create movies that show Marines moving in formations.  This gives the students a much more lifelike representation of tactical movement. 

Another benefit of using Machinima is a reduction in the need for instructors to provide one-on-one instruction to students.  In Marine Corps academies, there are usually only one to two instructors for every twenty two students.  Applying Machinima technology to VBS2-based simulation sequences, I will be able to create step-by-step videos that demonstrate to students how to manipulate the avatars in the simulation, freeing the instructors to focus on other things.  These videos will answer the simple questions students will have, as well as freeing up instructors to work with individuals that require more help.

The resource demand for this project will be minimal.  All developers have simulations laptops dedicated to the development of simulations.  The application software (e.g., CamStudio for video capture and JayCut for video editing) is free and fairly simple to use.  There will be a slight learning curve for learning the software, but once this is overcome the development time and expense of the videos and images will be minimal. 

Simulations are the future of education in the Marine Corps.  Finding a way to immerse Marines in this virtual world is the challenge.  Using Machinima videos—in conjunction with hands-on training—will give students an avenue to learn when the instructor is not available.  Technology allows us to teach from a distance and that is what this project is all about.

When I started this program in 2008 I was an active duty Marine working as the lead on a curriculum development team for the Marine Corps University. This program and degree fit perfectly with what I was doing at the time and the career path that I wanted to follow. Most of the Marine Corps are so far behind on education it was hard for me to imagine that they could or would ever catch-up, but the organization that I worked for changed my mind. I worked for managers that were forward thinking and ready to implement technology as long as it benefited the students. When I left I we were in the process of employing simulations to teach a wide mired of subjects and skills.

I currently work for the Marine Corps Network Security Operations Center (MCNOSC) as the Training Coordinator. The MCNOSC is responsible for supplying the garrison and deployed Marine Corps with both secure and non-secure network connectivity. While working in Information Technology (IT) is not my specialty, I took the job to secure a position in the Federal Civilian workforce. It has been a hard transition from education to IT, because the train of thought is completely different. In my last job I was developing curriculum and in this job they want training packages.

For the most part it seems to me that the IT community is not concerned with college and degrees, they are concerned with certificates. They have a certificate for every facet of IT, whether it is a Cisco, Microsoft or ITIL, if there is piece of equipment there is a cert. At first I thought this was a little odd and that this kind of limited people, but the more I am involved with IT the more I realize that this is a very effective way of training individuals for a specific job. I think that this mirrors Allan Collins article, Rethinking Education by Allan Collins. In the article Rethinking Education, Allan Collins believes that schools should veer away from standardized testing and put students on a career pat. Once they figure out what path they want, i.e. college or computers they would be tested on competency and receive certification.

After reading Allen Collins articles I think that the IT industry has a very good plan for certification. The only thing I would possibly change is the way they teach their courses. In the past six months I have been to a couple of these certification classes and they usually last one to two weeks. They are a crash course in the subject and test your retention of the material, not if you can apply it. I would like to see a little more practical application of the material and just test memorization. Other than that I think that my place of employment has a very solid program for certifications.

With that in mind, let’s get to the exciting part. When everyone came to work last Thursday, Internet Explorer won’t open using any icon available. We received calls from multiple users in various offices throughout same building, but not all users in each office. This confirmed that this was not an isolated problem. Immediately we went through the possible causes:

1. virus
2. registry corruption
3. improper or corrupt upgrade attempt

We immediately went considered what we could do to fix the problem. These were:

1. reinstall IE6
2. reinstall IE6 and upgrade to IE7
3. reinstall IE7

While troubleshooting it was discovered that IE7 did install and functioned correctly, but IE6 was not properly uninstalled during the process. All of the icons on the computer were still linked to IE6 instead of IE7. We deleted all of the old icons and created new icons from IE7. Once the problem was revealed and a solution developed, a representative could quickly move from one user to another and correct it. This problem could have been easily avoided if upgrade had been tested in the proper environment.

The solution to the problem definitely depends on the requestor.  If it is one of the regular indifferent individuals I work with I have to consider the very basic solutions such as is the Cat-5 cable unplugged or damaged and does the computer need to be restarted.  If it is someone I trust to do some basic troubleshooting I would go to more advanced problems like the NIC is bad or maybe the switch port is inactive.  The solutions for this problem can be as easy as pushing the Cat-5 in or replacing it to restarting the computer or as complex as reinstalling the NIC driver or replacing the NIC completely.

One of the issues that we have to deal with is that we have to go through a company that controls our network called NMCI. NMCI I a massive company that is over tasked and under staffed, so if their support is needed to resolve an issue it could take several days.  It never fails that the problem ends up being on the more complex end of the solutions and we end up running through the complete gamut of solutions to troubleshoot this issue.  The actions that we took to resolve one of the more complex incidents went like this:

• Check Cat-5 Connection
• Restart Computer
• Call NMCI for support
• NMCI sends tech
• NMCI tech calls for support
• Support team checks switch port activity
• NMCI tech troubleshoots NIC
• NIC was destroyed by a thunderstorm
• NMCI tech calls Dell
• Dell sends tech to install replacement NIC
• Issue resolved

In reflection this type of problem can be complex or simple to the point of incompetence.  I think it is important to stay with the OSI model when troubleshooting.  As a troubleshooter you should check the physical issues first by ensuring that the Cat-5 cable is plugged into the switch port and the PC.  Second check the data link by making sure the lights on the port are flashing, restart computer to refresh IP Address which fixes most problems.  We have restricted access so we must call NMCI to reach an individual that has administrative access.  From this point the NMCI tech found that the NIC was destroyed by a surge from a storm.

The laptop was totaled, so I immediately ordered another. I took the destroyed laptop apart to retrieve the hard drive. I got the hard drive out and to my dismay it sounded like a maraca when I shook it. I just happened to land right on the hard drive when I fell; total loss.

So by this point I felt really stupid, but there is more. A couple of months earlier I had bought the Apple time capsule to back up my computer, but I never did the backup. So not only did I lose my laptop, I also lost all of my data. I ended up having to go to the U of I book store to purchase all of my software. I will say that I learned a very valuable lesson during this snow storm.