Well, it seems inevitable that each of us has a "technology is a pain in the butt sometimes" post on here, and my time has come at last.
First of all, I share a lot of people's frustrations with the case study assignments. I had a hard time getting my head around the concepts in the first one, but once I did, I found it relatively easy to lay out a diagram in Microsoft Word. For the second case study, I thought I would use Word again. After I laid out my flow charts on paper (which only took maybe a couple hours), I started using Word’s flowchart features and thought it would be just a couple more hours. Then the horrors began. For some reason I still don’t understand, I was totally unable to make arrows connecting the boxes; I could draw an arrow between them, but if I moved a box, the arrow wouldn’t stay connected. I fooled with that for an hour or so, then naturally, I began to panic. I tried using Powerpoint , but I had the same problem. Finally, I tried Gliffy, which I probably should have gone with from the beginning. It was (fairly) easy to use, though trying to keep all of those arrows separated from each other was pretty frustrating. I’m glad I didn’t wait until the last minute to do this!
So essentially, my homework took a couple of hours to actually do, and about eight (ugh) hours to implement. I guess computer graphics tools haven’t quite caught up with pencil and paper. Then again, there was probably some user error involved.
I could have also told the story about my 3 minute podcast for another class that took half an hour to write, another half hour to record, and 3 hours to edit! Technology 2, Joel 0.
3 comments:
Joel,
I used Word for my flowcharts as well. I'm not sure that you can connect the arrows to the boxes. The way that I did it was I just made all of the boxes and lined them up the way that I wanted. Then I created a bunch of arrows and lines and moved them around until they pointed to the correct boxes. I'm sure that there is an easier way. If I spent my days making flowcharts, I would probably use Gliffy or something else that is more user-friendly. But I just went with what I know.
Grouping is often the key to keeping your arrows and boxes together. Frustration and triumph are the flip sides of working with technology - you have to go through the first to experience the second.
Thanks for the mention and compliments to Gliffy. If you have specific suggestions (what would you like to see different with the arrows, etc). Thanks!
debik at gliffy dot com
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