Hello again.
Only one more week... That's right. By this time next week, I'll have completed my project and my Masters course this semester. I can't wait. It's been a very interesting project, and I've learned a lot. I am glad though that it's finally nearing completion. We have one more live class next Wednesday, and our final project is due that same day. I'm really close to being done. All I really have to do now is fix a few things, and write up a couple more documents, and print everything out. Then it's done. I am quite curious how long the final document will end up being, because we're essentially printing all the design documents for both last and this semester, the instruction, evaluation, and feedbak and final reports. I'm thinking it will be at least 50 pages by the time all is said and done. It will be a great thing to add to my portfolio though.
Work is going well too. I'm still working on the usual stuff like outreach and training, but I'm starting a few new projects too. This past Wednesday I met with a few people at Dayton's Bluff Library to start working on an audio project for the library website. There are some key policies and information that would be helpful to people in audio form. The first part of the project is to figure out what information we want to focus on. Then we'll find people who can help translate these pieces into a few different languages. Finally, we'll be recording audio files of all of these translations for the website. Some library policies are hard to understand for some customers, so including both text and audio descriptions in their native language should really help.
I've also been helping more with the Digital Advisory team at Intermedia Arts. I've been helping come up with ideas and accessibility suggestions for their new website. The team also briefly spoke at an Intermedia Arts board meeting last night. Things are going well, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the website progresses.
I've also been learning about more assistive technology workshops and presentations around St. Paul that I plan on going to. I'm always trying to learn more about what's out there, and especially learn more about other technology that help people with other disabilities. I know AT for visual disabilities pretty well, but still feel I don't know as much as I'd like about other technology. I'm also using these sessions as an outreach and networking time. It's a great way to inform people what services and technology are here for free, at the library. Of course I'm starting to think about life after CTEP, and possible job opportunities in the assistive technology field, and the more connections the better.
I also got to take a quick look at the assistive technology computer at Dayton's Bluff/Metro State library. The computer itself is pretty nice actually. The only thing that's maybe lacking a little is memory. When running all the recent assistive technology it's really useful to have 1 GB RAM, and the good news is RAM's dirt cheap right now. As for assistive technology, they have a couple of programs, but they aren't recent versions. I also learned that JAWS isn't on that machine. We're looking to address to this because otherwise I can't really use that computer. They currently have Kurzweil and Dragon Naturally Speaking. So over the next couple of weeks, I'm hoping to make some connections with other colleges and universities around the area, to see what they offer for assistive technology, what's pretty standard, and what unique things each one might have. This should help presenting our case that there is a need for some additional technology. I'm also going to plug WebAdapt, especially since it's free and all...
So I have plenty to keep me busy at work. I'm really hoping to get more customers coming in because it's really slowed down since it's gotten nice outside. One cool thing I just learned while I was typing this, is a couple other library branches should be getting a similar assistive technology computer. There's a meeting about it in the beginning of May, which I don't know if I'll be helping with yet or not. I hope I can though because I feel it's a very valuable service.
Oh, and we're still working on our video project for our Accessibility and Usability committee. We shot some footage at Lexington on Saturday, and will finish the rest of the footage we need by this weekend. ON Monday, we're going to meet, and go over what we have, and how we want to proceed from there. It might be interesting to see how things work out. One of our committee members is leaving CTEP for a cool new job she just got, so that's really cool.
I haven't had much time for anything really fun or exciting this week. I've been pretty busy. I'm still playing my DS off and on. I really love this little system, and I'm so glad I got it. It's really nice because I'm not tied down to a TV, and it's a great way to kill a couple minutes between other stuff. I've been playing quite a bit of Tetris DS and started Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow. Both are really fun. I'm also looking forward to The New Super Mario Brothers and the updated DS system that I might have to get later in May. The screens are much better and brighter, whichwill really help. Also, I can't remember the exact dates, but the coolest time of the year for gamers is coming up in May. E3, or the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is coming up, and I can't wait to see all the awesome stuff that will be coming out over the next year. I'm especially excited to learn more about Nintendo's mysterious Revolution console. I sooo wish I were going this year, but I'll settle for camping out in front of the computer off and on for a couple days to get all the happenings.
Finally, since everyone is posting videos and other interesting projects on their blogs, I'll end my mini-novel with a very very cool link. The people behind this site are part of the demo scene. These demos are like little movies, but are actually generated by code rather than actual video footage. The really interesting thing is, these demos are very small. These guys produce some very amazing stuff that can fit on a floppy. They also have started making an actual simple first person shooter game in under a meg, which you can get from this site. I highly recommend checking this site out, and watching and playing these demos. I recommend watching FR08 The Product and FR035 or something, The Popular Demo. The game is pretty sweet too, especially for how much content is crammed into under 1 MB. Go to http://theproduct.de/index.html to see the demos.
And that'll do it for this week.
Only one more week... That's right. By this time next week, I'll have completed my project and my Masters course this semester. I can't wait. It's been a very interesting project, and I've learned a lot. I am glad though that it's finally nearing completion. We have one more live class next Wednesday, and our final project is due that same day. I'm really close to being done. All I really have to do now is fix a few things, and write up a couple more documents, and print everything out. Then it's done. I am quite curious how long the final document will end up being, because we're essentially printing all the design documents for both last and this semester, the instruction, evaluation, and feedbak and final reports. I'm thinking it will be at least 50 pages by the time all is said and done. It will be a great thing to add to my portfolio though.
Work is going well too. I'm still working on the usual stuff like outreach and training, but I'm starting a few new projects too. This past Wednesday I met with a few people at Dayton's Bluff Library to start working on an audio project for the library website. There are some key policies and information that would be helpful to people in audio form. The first part of the project is to figure out what information we want to focus on. Then we'll find people who can help translate these pieces into a few different languages. Finally, we'll be recording audio files of all of these translations for the website. Some library policies are hard to understand for some customers, so including both text and audio descriptions in their native language should really help.
I've also been helping more with the Digital Advisory team at Intermedia Arts. I've been helping come up with ideas and accessibility suggestions for their new website. The team also briefly spoke at an Intermedia Arts board meeting last night. Things are going well, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the website progresses.
I've also been learning about more assistive technology workshops and presentations around St. Paul that I plan on going to. I'm always trying to learn more about what's out there, and especially learn more about other technology that help people with other disabilities. I know AT for visual disabilities pretty well, but still feel I don't know as much as I'd like about other technology. I'm also using these sessions as an outreach and networking time. It's a great way to inform people what services and technology are here for free, at the library. Of course I'm starting to think about life after CTEP, and possible job opportunities in the assistive technology field, and the more connections the better.
I also got to take a quick look at the assistive technology computer at Dayton's Bluff/Metro State library. The computer itself is pretty nice actually. The only thing that's maybe lacking a little is memory. When running all the recent assistive technology it's really useful to have 1 GB RAM, and the good news is RAM's dirt cheap right now. As for assistive technology, they have a couple of programs, but they aren't recent versions. I also learned that JAWS isn't on that machine. We're looking to address to this because otherwise I can't really use that computer. They currently have Kurzweil and Dragon Naturally Speaking. So over the next couple of weeks, I'm hoping to make some connections with other colleges and universities around the area, to see what they offer for assistive technology, what's pretty standard, and what unique things each one might have. This should help presenting our case that there is a need for some additional technology. I'm also going to plug WebAdapt, especially since it's free and all...
So I have plenty to keep me busy at work. I'm really hoping to get more customers coming in because it's really slowed down since it's gotten nice outside. One cool thing I just learned while I was typing this, is a couple other library branches should be getting a similar assistive technology computer. There's a meeting about it in the beginning of May, which I don't know if I'll be helping with yet or not. I hope I can though because I feel it's a very valuable service.
Oh, and we're still working on our video project for our Accessibility and Usability committee. We shot some footage at Lexington on Saturday, and will finish the rest of the footage we need by this weekend. ON Monday, we're going to meet, and go over what we have, and how we want to proceed from there. It might be interesting to see how things work out. One of our committee members is leaving CTEP for a cool new job she just got, so that's really cool.
I haven't had much time for anything really fun or exciting this week. I've been pretty busy. I'm still playing my DS off and on. I really love this little system, and I'm so glad I got it. It's really nice because I'm not tied down to a TV, and it's a great way to kill a couple minutes between other stuff. I've been playing quite a bit of Tetris DS and started Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow. Both are really fun. I'm also looking forward to The New Super Mario Brothers and the updated DS system that I might have to get later in May. The screens are much better and brighter, whichwill really help. Also, I can't remember the exact dates, but the coolest time of the year for gamers is coming up in May. E3, or the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is coming up, and I can't wait to see all the awesome stuff that will be coming out over the next year. I'm especially excited to learn more about Nintendo's mysterious Revolution console. I sooo wish I were going this year, but I'll settle for camping out in front of the computer off and on for a couple days to get all the happenings.
Finally, since everyone is posting videos and other interesting projects on their blogs, I'll end my mini-novel with a very very cool link. The people behind this site are part of the demo scene. These demos are like little movies, but are actually generated by code rather than actual video footage. The really interesting thing is, these demos are very small. These guys produce some very amazing stuff that can fit on a floppy. They also have started making an actual simple first person shooter game in under a meg, which you can get from this site. I highly recommend checking this site out, and watching and playing these demos. I recommend watching FR08 The Product and FR035 or something, The Popular Demo. The game is pretty sweet too, especially for how much content is crammed into under 1 MB. Go to http://theproduct.de/index.html to see the demos.
And that'll do it for this week.
posted by Jesse Anderson at 9:07 AM
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