Velma’s Blog

Centra was great today. I learnt how to build an agenda using Agenda Builder. This was saved on my computer as a .saz file. The next step was to go to Manage Subjects and add a subject. I only had to fill in the required field and then submit it. Once submitted I needed to find it – needed to remember the name! The name came up but only as a name – it was still empty. I needed to click on Add. The next dialogue box was really confusing as it gave little feedback. Basically I had to click the Add Agenda button and then browse for the agenda I had saved on my computer. Once I clicked Add it went back to the confusing page where I clicked Done. Had I finished? No.

I needed to go to the Manage Events section and modify it under Agenda Content. When I pulled down the subject box my agenda was listed there ready for selection. Clicking on Modify at the bottom of the page meant that my agenda was now attached to my event.

I successfully created a survey and an evaluation. However, the evaluation looked greyed out when it came up in Centra and when I clicked on it to use it I just got a summary of zero responses. I could not work out how to get people to fill in the evaluation.

On the positive side eleven people took part in Celebrate Success 4. I had a new co-presenter whom I logged on as co-host. He quickly picked up what to do and was able to show me a few features I had not used before such as full screen. In turn I was able to train him in the basics such as giving and taking microphones, removing hands and ticks and promoting people to co-presenter status.

PowerPoints again presented a problem in that not all the information showed up on the screen. The transitions were effective though. A PhotoStory was played, music and all, without a hitch. It seems .wmv files are not problematic. A single PowerPoint slide containing a screen shot of an Excel graph presented no problems.

The really exciting thing was using AppShare. I asked the boy who made the graph to demonstrate how he got patterns on the columns. After being promoted to co-presenter he successfully completed this by navigating his way over the network to his folder and file. It was so effective I asked another student to do the same thing and she successfully took us to her PowerPoint. Despite being lunch time the students were keen to continue but I chose to wrap it up.

This cohort of students is keen to participate in Centra events next year. They have been trained. They are ready.

Celebrate Success? Yeah!