BW UMConnect Blog

The MP3 Player is great

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 19:37:02 -0600

Completing the course was rewarded with an mp3 player. I never knew how good the music would sound. Amy did good!

End of the Course

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:02:40 -0600

This Extension 2.0 course has been enjoyable and I wish I could have done this back when I was chair bound after transplant surgery so I could spend more time at it rather than the 30-60 minutes each week that I did. I think the greatest learning came in working with the blogs and the Google aps. I think that I could be doing more in this yet in the future. The picture sites will also be used. This is probably the change that I will use in work the most but I do have some reservations about putting peoples pictures on the sites. There are so many free things out there that weren't there 5 years ago! My best discovery was in Google Sites for free web pages.

I would be interested in continuing some more development with a few other people. I also look forward to the next offering of Extension 3.0!

Use UMConnect to Remind Yourself How to Do Complex Activities

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:19:26 -0600

I have found that UMConnect is useful to record complex computer operations. Recently, we were having a refresher session on how to use a web survey service. I had written instructions about the process before but it was still hard to get it right. So once I remembered how to do it, I decided to record the steps in a recording of UMConnect.

I opened a UMConnect meeting and only left one large "Share" window open. I shared my desktop. I then started recording. I returned back to the survey computer program, completed the steps that I wanted to record for future reference, and then went back to UMConnect and stopped recording. This recording is now a recording under that UMConnect meeting site.

I keep one UMConnect meeting room available for immediate use when I want to quickly meet with someone during a phone call. Give it a personalized name that you can easily remember like "BWSspace". This is a good place to keep recordings since it is a meeting that you will not delete.

VERY IMPORTANT! If you plan to record a meeting when you are using a conference call, you will need a microphone by your speakerphone. Test it out to get you settings adequate to record your voice and the others on the telephone.

Tweet, Tweet, Chat

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:15:16 -0600

I watched the Twitter video and read the articles but I do have concerns about the distractions that this can cause in a person's professional life. I may see if some of the others that I work with closely want to try UMChat for a while to see what happens. Keeping the train of thought going when you're on a complex project does not need one more thing to interrupt it. I know that my daughter does a lot of messaging but I have not been thrilled.

Give me a phone!

Gone for a Week

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 21:31:11 -0600

Well, this last week I was at Galaxy, presenting with 4 colleagues from across the USA so I didn't do any new UMConnect work since I could not get a connection without paying an arm and a leg.

I did do the homework from some public computers and made a LinkedIn profile. But I found it really difficult to find others to network with. I'm going to need some help on that. Must be the idiot at the keyboard.

I struggle a little with the social networking aspect of this. I think it is because there have been so many poor examples that seem to make the papers. Kids posting photos of themselves breaking the law is a prime example. The people I deal with are usually high level professionals that don't seem to have these sites. But I do know that my younger co-workers have several sites. I'll need to discuss this more with them.

Helping Others, Helping Myself

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 03:13:08 -0600

This was another learning and teaching week with UMConnect. I helped my co-worker, Angie, get ready for a UMConnect conference with people across the country. She managed to get another presenter from across the country on camera to help teach others on her topic of the day. As I helped her prepare, we found that it was always important to determine if the other presenters camera has an internal program that is using their video camera that the image will then not work on UMConnect. They need to turn off the other program for UMConnect to broadcast their image.

A couple of my Galaxy Conference teammates have been so happy with our collaboration across UMConnect that they are now taking classes at their own universities on how to use their own systems.

This week for Extension 2.0, I did spend quite a bit of time looking at the online applications. I even established a website on Google sites that I am using for our handouts for the Galaxy Conference. Basecamp is a little deciving in the sense that you can get a "free account" but that is like a free credit card. You can't really use it without paying after the free trial.

I like the Picnik site. I do have a good photo editor at home but now this gives me more access to one at work. I also like the idea of the file repositories. This may be useful to use at a conference where they have computer labs with the presentations on them for downloading. If you don't have a flash drive, save it to your online storage site. I use Netfiles but at times it is hard to understand how to share these files or give people access to them. Some of these seem a little easier to use than Netfiles. I found Zamzar interesting in that it appears that it is like someone volunteering to do conversions in their spare time. I did try Google docs but how it handled some of the graphics I had in a Word document seemed weird.

More on Presenter Mode

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 05:12:59 -0600

Last week I discussed Presenter Only Screen. It is useful to have that when you decide to do a quick poll of those participating on the UMConnect presentation. Yesterday I wanted to ask our group if they preferred that we address an issue in person at our next meeting or on another UMConnect meeting. I was able to quickly write a poll in Presenter Mode and drag it on to the public area. 30 seconds later I received their opinion. I then hit "broadcast" and everyone could see what the total vote result was. We also used the status symbols in the attendee area to do another poll. People could choose "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" if multiple choice is not needed. But people forgot to clear their status so we saw continuous symbols during the rest of the meeting. I should have remembered that I could have used the pod options icon to select everyone and clear their status.

In this week's Wiki lesson I discovered that are good Wikis and a lot of information that is useless to a lot of people in other Wikis. I don't know if I will ever be a big participant in Wikis but at least I have a better understanding of how they are edited.

Presenter only mode for UMConnect

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:07:05 -0600

Just to bring you up to date on some UMConnect hints, I wanted to share a little bit about the Presenter Only mode. By clicking on the bottom right of the meeting (if you are a presenter or host) you gain some new windows that only the presenters see. You can use these pods for keeping notes that only the presenters see and prepare polls to share. I used it the other day because some people on our meeting said that it was distracting to see notes about the meeting being taken on the meeting screen. Most of the time I like for everyone to see the notes so that if there is a disagreement about what was said we can address it immediately. Your choice.

I did take a look at PodNova and I had to review Amy's film one more time to get it right. I'll need to try it several times. I do occasionally use podcasts to catch up on WCCO news. More will be done as a weekend project.

UMConnect as an alternative for video storage

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:34:44 -0600

As I did the Extension 2.0 assignment for this week, it reminded me of two things. On Friday, I had a person who I have not seen since in 38 years, call me. He had run across an old photo when he was my religion instructor in 1970 and he did an internet search to find me. He told me he had run across a photo of me on Flickr, which I did not know was there. Sure enough I found a photo of me in my presentation for the SELCO organization last April.

But Amy mentioned a few locations for video storage and I wanted to share on my blog for UMConnect that I have made and stored videos on the UMConnect site. I use my Logitech camera to record a video. Despite my best attempts, I cannot view it in its native format. But I am able to convert the video type using AVS Media Converter into formats that I can see, including a Flash file. Flash file videos can be placed on UMConnect and viewed. These files can be used for live presentations or as recorded files. One annoyance is that a flash video left open in UMConnect will continually loop. I wish it had a start and pause button selection.

I have not been real fond of Flickr but I can see that it has some uses. Since many of my photos are of people I don't want to get permission so that I can place it there. I did like all the family photos of Amy's family.

UMConnect, Blogs and RSS

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:06:06 -0600

First of all to add a new item on my UMConnect blog I wanted to share an item about managing groups in UMConnect. If you enter UMConnect by http://umconnect.umn.edu you instantly start managing your meetings but there is no way to manage groups. If you wish to create groups or edit ones that you did create you need to do the www.umn.edu/umconnect URL. Then select MANAGE UMCONNECT ACCOUNT. You will then see groups. You can see which groups you belong to in your Profile. Don't be surprised if they all don't show up.

I did test using RSS feeds in both Firefox and Bloglines. I added a couple in each and find Firefox easier to use but Bloglines an interesting place to organize things. Of course the most common RSS feed is in myU News portal and I'll probably use that more than any other.

Educators should log into UMConnect correctly

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:36:03 -0600

In Community Vitality/Community Economics we use UMConnect during our monthly conference calls. We can see the agenda, share new information, and type out a short monthly report to let other know what we are doing that they may be interested in. I set the system up so that team members could go into the meeting the meeting days in advance to type in their reports. I gave each one Presenter rights. But I found that most people would sign into UMConnect using the Guest box that is the default radio button when you enter the system. This would not allow a person to write in their note pod. To help people understand how to sign in correctly I recorded the following UMConnect session on signing on to UMConnect. If you wish to watch part of this 5 minute recorded session, have your computer audio activated and paste this URL into a new browser page. I'll discuss how this recording was made using flashpaper on a future blog.

https://umconnect.umn.edu/p78613533/

Let's get this started

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:59:41 -0600

I'm hoping that this can be a place where I document how I've been able to use UMConnect and share some of the mistakes I've made.