Portfolio
What follows is a select list of projects and writing samples that are representative of my knowledge, skills and abilities. The samples fall into three categories: web design, writing and e-learning projects which have been drawn from past employment experiences and my studies at East Stroudsburg University and Cal State, East Bay. A brief explanation / reflection accompanies each project below. Unless otherwise noted, work products displayed here were created entirely by me…this includes the coding, graphics, and all content.
Web Design
Description: Bob Liebesman is an accomplished technical recruiter who has a remarkable track record in sourcing and recruiting for highly technical areas. When he decided to leave corporate America he asked me to design a website for him that would serve as a primary marketing vehicle for his business. The site was designed and developed to reflect the highly technical nature of his work. The site is done in classic XHTML and takes advantage of the power of CSS to serve in place of images.
Description: When the Orchestral Director of the Nazareth Area School District’s String Program asked me to create a website for her, I couldn’t refuse (I really couldn’t - she’s my wife). In all seriousness, Laura wanted to create a site that would allow her to easily post and update information for her students and parents and serve as a critical linkage for home-school communication. I decided to use WordPress as the engine for the site because the interface is very easy to learn and I knew from past experience that it had the core functionality that would allow it to accomplish everything it needed to with a little creative coding. The site features a fully functional event / activity calendar, the blog which is used to post news and homework assignments and a lot of other features that every teacher needs to have a well-rounded website. The coding for this site was done in Notepad and all of the graphics were created with Fireworks.
Description coming soon.
Writing Samples
Coming soon!
E-Learning Projects
This was the first course in a series that I developed for PMI. Because of the ease of use and consistency, the graphical treatment now serves as the standard for all subsequent courses that have been/will be developed for the Leadership e-Learning program. The entire application was created using ToolBook - a robust eLearning development tool. The course features branching logic, abundant use of ToolBooks Actions Editor and some OpenScript. Additionally, all of the content is SCORM 1.2 compliant which works very well with the LMS we use to manage and deliver our content. The design was created not only with best practices for adult learning, accessibility and usability in mind but also to be consistent with PMI’s brand standards. All graphic elements were created using Adobe Fireworks.
ESU Interactive Reflective Decision Maker Application
This is a continuation of the project below. After converting the source files from .ppt to .fla, I attempted to build-in behaviors and interactivity, but quickly discovered the limitations of the application I was using. Despite the time investment, I decided to start from scratch, this time using ToolBook - a robust eLearning development tool. The course features branching logic, abundant use of ToolBooks Actions Editor and some OpenScript (SumTotal’s proprietary scripting language). Additionally, all of the content is SCORM 1.2 compliant. This is the Beta release and should only need minimal revision to prepare it for production.
Interactive Reflective Decision Maker - .ppt to flash conversion
This is a current work in progress. I was approached by the ESU School of Professional Studies to transform a series of three .ppt presentations that they used as a summative assessment instrument into something more suitable for the web. It is a work in progress becuase the ultimate end-product will leverage both flash and dynamic html to provide the learner a user-friendly environment. The flash conversion was done primarily in Swish Presenter, with some editing of the resultant scripting done in flash. It is not a perfect translation of the presentation, but does demonstrate the power of rapid eLearning development tools in creating a very good facsimile of the presentation with very little designer intervention.
A Brief History of PMI - .ppt to flash conversion w/audio
This is a recent project that I completed for a course assignment. I decided to try my hand at integrating flash and audio to see if I could present a brief history of the project management field and my current employer, PMI, in an interactive manner. I used Swish Presenter for the initial conversion, updated the source files with Macromedia Flash and added audio using Audacity. While not perfect, I believe this is an excellent approach for transforming .ppt presentations into something a lot more engaging and a great sample of raplid e-learning design.
eLearning Standards Knowledge Quest
This deliverable resulted from an assignment our cohort was given to set aside several hours (20+/-) to work on a personally meaningful project and advance your knowledge in an area of interest. I chose to to work on the area of eLearning standards because it is a topic that is growing in importance, especially as businesses and organizations implement more formalized eLearning processes and adopt Learning Management Systems.
Accessible Design for eLearning
One of most important changes for educators who are new to teaching online is the transition from presenting on paper to presenting onscreen. People may be able to read fairly dense text presented on paper, but their ability to concentrate and comprehend in an online setting is significantly reduced. The online educator needs to learn how to present material in way which their students can take in. This product resulted from an assignment to transform this unimaginatively formatted document/article on elearning (Original) into an effective activity on the web. The purpose of the assignment was to demonstrate our understanding of a range of accessibility issues and be able to relate them to the practice of designing online activities.
This was the resultant product of a small group project. For the assignment, each small group was given a teaching strategy to find out and teach others about. We were then responsible for preparing a lesson to share with our classmates. The final result needed to be more than simply an online lecture or simple web page. My partners did much of the research while I translated their findings (with some of my own into the final product: both a paper and a web based tutorial. It is really my first instructional design for the web.
