The best laid plans...
...of mice and men often go awry, as the saying goes. No matter how carefully a project is planned, something may still go wrong with it. In colloquial parlance, we like to refer to this as Murphy's Law - anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Nowhere is this this more true than when it comes to relying on technology working correctly in order to submit an assignment before the online deadline expires.
One of the more intriguing assignments in the first semester was the podcast assignment that was the culmination of the first Instructional Design module that year. The short e-tivities completed in the preceding weeks served to construct the building blocks of the assignment so that we had a potential theme for an e-learning course. It also introduced the concepts of needs analysis, audience analysis etc. that are the fundamental criteria that need to be considered for any type of e-learning course.
Although I had no background in teaching, I did find it quite interesting to learn how structured the whole process was. Once we had chosen our topic, and conducted the various analyses, the next e-tivity required the selection of one task within that topic, to revise the task based on feedback, and to include performance, terminal, and lesson objectives for the task. Again, this was all new to me so I welcomed the opportunity to step outside my comfort zone and develop a new way of thinking.
Which brings me to the podcast assignment. Having refined our task from the previous e-tivities, we were required to develop a 5-10 minute instructional podcast related to the topic and task previously chosen. Writing the script for the podcast was straightforward enough as I had received helpful feedback which allowed me to refine the content. I also made sure to practice reading the script aloud to ensure that it stayed within the required time frame and that I was familiar with the material.
When it came time to record the podcast using Audacity, I realized that I didn't have a set of headphones with a microphone. Fortunately, I do have enthusiastic game-playing sons who have the necessary headsets. Although, there was a bit of disgruntlement over losing precious game time by lending me the headset, I recorded the podcast using the Xbox headphones since they're made by Microsoft, and my laptop is a Windows PC. It all went beautifully, with excellent sound quality, and I played it back a few times over the next few days to make sure it sounded well-paced and 'professional'.
Now comes the "best laid plans" part. For some reason, the evening it was due for submission, I got some notion in my head that maybe I could edit it a small bit to make it 'flow' better and so I decided to re-record it...and my computer crashed, losing the entire audio file that I'd worked so hard on, just one hour before the submission deadline. To make matters worse, my son had taken his Xbox headphones with him to his friend's house so I had to frantically scramble to find a replacement pair.
Another son had a Playstation pair but the audio wasn't as good and I had to rush through re-recording the podcast, managing to submit it with just minutes to spare. To say I was stressed was an understatement, as I watched the upload button progress at a snail's pace and finally confirm submission just before the deadline. It was a hard lesson learned and, after that, I made sure that I had everything finalized a day beforehand and assignments submitted at least an hour ahead of time to allow for any such technical difficulties in the future.
The most amusing aspect of all this is the feedback that I received for the assignment. While I scored very well overall, the lecturer noted that the podcast had sounded a little "rushed" so I'm glad to have had this opportunity to tell the story behind it. Listening back to it again, I'm amazed at how calm I sound, given how panicked I felt. First rule of working with computers - if it ain't broke, don't fix it; second rule - *always* have a contingency plan.
__________________________________________________________________________
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another
with no loss of enthusiasm." ~ Winston Churchill
One of the more intriguing assignments in the first semester was the podcast assignment that was the culmination of the first Instructional Design module that year. The short e-tivities completed in the preceding weeks served to construct the building blocks of the assignment so that we had a potential theme for an e-learning course. It also introduced the concepts of needs analysis, audience analysis etc. that are the fundamental criteria that need to be considered for any type of e-learning course.
Although I had no background in teaching, I did find it quite interesting to learn how structured the whole process was. Once we had chosen our topic, and conducted the various analyses, the next e-tivity required the selection of one task within that topic, to revise the task based on feedback, and to include performance, terminal, and lesson objectives for the task. Again, this was all new to me so I welcomed the opportunity to step outside my comfort zone and develop a new way of thinking.
Which brings me to the podcast assignment. Having refined our task from the previous e-tivities, we were required to develop a 5-10 minute instructional podcast related to the topic and task previously chosen. Writing the script for the podcast was straightforward enough as I had received helpful feedback which allowed me to refine the content. I also made sure to practice reading the script aloud to ensure that it stayed within the required time frame and that I was familiar with the material.
Now comes the "best laid plans" part. For some reason, the evening it was due for submission, I got some notion in my head that maybe I could edit it a small bit to make it 'flow' better and so I decided to re-record it...and my computer crashed, losing the entire audio file that I'd worked so hard on, just one hour before the submission deadline. To make matters worse, my son had taken his Xbox headphones with him to his friend's house so I had to frantically scramble to find a replacement pair.
Another son had a Playstation pair but the audio wasn't as good and I had to rush through re-recording the podcast, managing to submit it with just minutes to spare. To say I was stressed was an understatement, as I watched the upload button progress at a snail's pace and finally confirm submission just before the deadline. It was a hard lesson learned and, after that, I made sure that I had everything finalized a day beforehand and assignments submitted at least an hour ahead of time to allow for any such technical difficulties in the future.
The most amusing aspect of all this is the feedback that I received for the assignment. While I scored very well overall, the lecturer noted that the podcast had sounded a little "rushed" so I'm glad to have had this opportunity to tell the story behind it. Listening back to it again, I'm amazed at how calm I sound, given how panicked I felt. First rule of working with computers - if it ain't broke, don't fix it; second rule - *always* have a contingency plan.
__________________________________________________________________________
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another
with no loss of enthusiasm." ~ Winston Churchill
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