One of my favorite courses in the Educational Technology program was Digital Games and Simulations in the Classroom. The focus was writing curriculum with a gamification focus that can be used in the classroom. As somebody that has enjoyed the hobby of gaming starting when I was in kindergarten and the first Nintendo arrived on the scenes, I have been glued to a game controller ever since. In my usual style I used this opportunity to try out the new web design techniques. In this case I utilized Adobe Edge Animate software. Click the above picture or here for my final project. Anyone that is unaware of Adobe Edge the software itself it is the answer to the archaic Flash web technology. Full mobile friendly HTML5 animations with no plug-in required. It was quite a task writing curriculum for the Oklahoma Standards in k-12 since I am mainly familiar with college level education, however, I think my determination to understand all levels of curriculum speaks for itself.

Introduction to Instructional Design was my first course in the Educational Technology program. This was also my first exposure to instructional design as a process. The course had a major focus on the ADDIE model considering it is the most well known model in instructional design. As a seasoned front-end web designer I also utilized this course to test out (and simply have fun) with some jQuery effects. Click here for my old site at synthethicmantis.com or the picture above to preview my (lovingly hand coded) final project for this class.

Below is my most relevant front-end/user interface examples. I have also done a considerable amount of Project Management and User Experience documentation, which is available upon request. If you need an energetic red-head that loves new challenges, feel free to eMail me.

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UI + UX + Instructional System Diagrams

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Above are a few static examples of Government eLearning User Interfaces I created. As well as, a few examples of flow diagrams I created during my time with Microsoft. 

Fortnite Quiz Royal

A working prototype I produced for a class at General Assembly which can be viewed here. The class focused on major facets of being a UX Designer. 
A slide for my final presentation can be viewed here.

Granicus work

Granicus offers a large assortment of software targeting Municipalities and other forms of Government. I have deployed hundreds of small Government SaaS solutions. A few large clients are listed below.

 

US House Live

When it comes to big names in Government, the US House is about as big as you get. Since I have started at Granicus I have been a personal liaison to the US House, updating internal UI and providing ongoing support.

Chicago City Clerk

The Chicago clerk is utilizing our biggest SaaS solution. The Chicago clerk was a joint effort by myself and their web-designer, bending HTML/CSS/JS to apply a fresh paint of UI onto an already established web-app.

Android Development

While working on at Granicus I was lucky enough to be selected for Android development and deployment for 3 of our clients. Utilizing the Titanium MVC JavaSript framework. Feel free to review all the the apps at this link here 

Bootstrap examples

Dignified Decision

Dignifieddecision.com  For this client, I created an elegant one page Bootstrap site with jQuery scroll animations and a complex .phpMailer script. I am also running the Google AdWords campaign and analytics.

Rabble + Rouser - Code Challenge

This site was created from a Photoshop file for a contest held by the Denver company, Rabble and Rouser.  From a Photoshop document, simple instructions, and only 5 days' time I created a responsive web-site with Parallax action. The web developers at Rabble said my code was solid.

Community College Web Page Design - instructor site

The first Bootstrap web-site I created was for a college class site I was teaching at Oklahoma City Community College. Check out the hall of fame for all my student's examples. I feel the direction I took all my students shows I have leadership skills in the world of front-end web design.

Drupal vs Moodle- masters project

In Master's course, "Computer Based Instructional Development",  I completed a considerable amount of research on what makes a unique user experience for students. I also got to made a bootstrap web-site about CMS Drupal and my LMS Moodle.

PHMSA

The content I created at PHMSA is protected under federal law and therefore available to the public. However, I have a few snapshots and the below glossary from my time with them.

This is a hand-coded glossary of terms for the agency. Well, the UI is actually jQuery UI. However, what was hand-coded was the changing backgrounds, a back to top smooth scroll button, and built-in jQuery syntax to create a dynamic equation that counts certain CSS classes. Clicking a tab will execute javaScript to auto-populate the count of specific classes in the glossary.

Still scrolling on my site?

Feel free to check out the work I have created while pursuing my Masters in Educational Technology. 

You can also contact me at [email protected]

Or watch the below youtube video showing the front-end development I did at Advanced Academics and the government contractor, Catapult Technology.

The Instructional Systems Management course in the Educational Technology program was quite the labor of love. The course opened my eyes to process driven world of project management. You can view the final submission for the class above.

There is always gratification in being assigned reading material for a college class that directly translates to your current job. I discuss the benefits of this course and how it assisted me in my instructional systems design role as a government contractor in my reflective essay. In my Instructional Systems Management course we had the assigned readings of the "Project Management Absolute Beginner's Guide."

The first chapter is when the real concepts of "project management," begin.  The most important realization I had was differentiating "project management," from "ongoing operations." I had heard the term "ongoing operations," referred to before in meetings with mangers. However, I had no idea "ongoing operations," is a very specific business verbiage with an umbrella of concepts behind it. Another term is "business as usual" but I prefer the ongoing operations terminology.   The below block-quote describes the deference between the two concepts.

... Examples of projects include the following:

• Building a new house

• Developing a new software application

• Performing an assessment of current manufacturing processes

This is in contrast to the operations of an organization. The operational work is the ongoing, repetitive set of activities that sustain the organization. Examples of ongoing operations include the following:

• Processing customer orders

• Performing accounts receivable and accounts payable activities

• Executing daily manufacturing orders

The above management speak is something I had never understood before. My career in eLearning has almost always been project based. Even the community college course I taught may happen on a routine basis, but every semester, it's a new group of students with different ways of obtaining the end goal. I interface with quite a few ongoing operations folks. Most notably the, subject matter experts. It's clear why some SMEs are resistant to eLearning projects. They can take away from their ongoing operations. The entire project management course has definitely helped me in the business world.