Conclusion Statement for Internship

Brian Roy

Conclusion Statement for Internship

Reflecting on my time with the Department of Human Services, I was forced to remember what it is like to be the ‘new guy’ in a situation. All the processes and unstated expectations that become common knowledge after you have been in a workgroup for a period of time. I found it interesting that the concepts and knowledge I had learned about e-learning were the exact same issues that the DHS was working through. I appreciated the fact that my skills were put to ‘real’ use and not some fluff project that will never be used.

I gained a respect for the process of producing professional quality work through the use of pre-established guidelines (Captivate rules on font size, bold, and colors for example). My prior experiences with Captivate were single assignments that would be viewed and forgotten. Those previous assignments did not have to maintain a theme and match other work done by others so that the end-user would find comfort in the fact that the program would behave and look the same as other materials that they have seen from the department.

Furthermore, I found it challenging to respect the copyright implications of simply doing a Google image search and placing it in a project. While my work as a technology specialist was to inform people of appropriate use and where to find ‘royalty free’ images, I often took the easy way of just using an image based on an excuse of ‘fair use’.

This internship will affect me and any work I may do for my district in the following ways. First, I now understand what a professional project is and how long one should take. This may not fit within the timelines that schools regularly work with, but the experience will allow me to make a more realistic assumption of time and manpower. Secondly, I gained a greater knowledge of some of the intricacies of Captivate. This will allow me to make my own projects even more engaging without sacrificing the curriculum.

Finally and maybe most importantly, is the fact that through time I have become a ‘subject matter expert’ and at times conveying just enough information is more important than ‘telling the whole story’. My students can be assured that when I am asked a question, I can now understand that they don’t necessarily need the whole answer. They need enough information to answer their question and come to their own understanding of the issue. This was made very clear to me when I was trying to get a grasp on the program used for calculating child support payments and changes (PRISM). This program has something like 60,000 individual screens that are all programmed to aid a child support officer with a child support case. I only worked with maybe 15 of those screens. So when I would ask a question, I only needed the short answer and not the answer that involved the ‘rare’ child support cases.

Alignment with ISTE NETS

While the work I did for the Department of Human Services was not aimed directly at the ISTE standards, I think enough of it aligns to show that the department is taking careful strides forward to produce quality education while keeping the learner’s needs in mind.

Creativity and innovation.

This topic seems completely counter intuitive to the department. They have laws that they have to follow so that every child support case is followed in a logical and orderly fashion. However, once the training takes place there is a procedure that is already established to make changes. This could be as simple as not having to re-enter a specific piece of data if it can be copied from another page or as complex as how to handle a non-custodial-parent’s travel visa so that they can go on a fishing trip to Canada.

The department is investigating if they can insert more scenario based learning into their curriculum. This will allow the learners to explore how the particulars of a case will be handled in a pro-active way (using simulation data so that no one’s case is actually affected). This allows the learner’s to interact with the child support computer system in a real way, but only the data and cases would be simulated.

Communication and Collaboration

A focal point of my internship was to investigate how to implement web 2.0 ideas into their curriculum. This aligns perfectly with ISTE-NETS Communication and Collaboration. The use of Wiki, Chat, and Blog tools allow the participants to accomplish sub-tasks A, B, D and even possibly C.

Research and Information Fluency

A key concept that was repeated to me many times as I developed the webpages for the two classes was: Do you have links to the resources? These resources varied from job aids (or cheat sheets) to links to the actual laws. These links allow the students to accomplish all of the sub-tasks for this strand of ISTE-NETS.

Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making

While child support cases are pretty straightforward there are some cases which are open to a little bit of interpretation. The resources listed out in Research and Information Fluency help address the issue of what to do in a certain situation. This allows the child support officer to make an informed decision by using a variety of resource material. All of the sub-tasks are addressed.

Digital Citizenship

Child support officers by nature have to be careful of the data they work with everyday. Using the computer does not change this. While my internship did not touch on lifelong learning or demonstrating leadership of being a digital citizen, it did work with the idea of sensitive materials and collaboration (through the use of the web 2.0 tools).

Technology Operations and Concepts

Through the use of the email tutorial that I designed end users can accomplish two of the tasks for the section. First, they will be using a technology system for transmitting secure information and second they will be using it more effectively. The tutorial allows the users to see how to change settings so that the system is more usable to their own preferences. Sub-task covered A and B.

Proposed amount of time versus the actual time

My proposal for the internship established 5 key areas in which I would focus my work and the estimated time for each of the areas.

They were: Feasibility Study (40 hours), SharePoint Mock-up (60 hours), iLinc (50 hours), Tutorial (35 hours) and other projects (30 hours).

The actual times are:

Feasibility Study 28.5 hours

SharePoint Mock-up 61 hours

iLinc 31.5 hours

Tutorial 54.5 hours

Other Projects 38 hours

Overall the estimates were a fairly decent guess of the time that each project would take. The biggest variances from the proposal to the actual hours were with learning iLinc and creating the e-mail tutorial.

The explanation for variance in time for the email project is that the tutorial was presented as a ‘quick tutorial to teach people how to use the email system’. What it turned out to be was far broader and more in depth project that I originally expected. However, I think that the final product will be usable and valuable to the department for future training needs (they are expecting to place this into their training in September ’09).

The difference in time for the iLinc project is that the product didn’t get purchased until my internship was approximately half way finished. If the product had been there from the beginning I think that the time would have come closer to matching my original estimate. The extra time would have allowed me to test how to set up a webinar in a more meticulous manner and create a more succinct set of directions.