The Web 2.0 tool I have chosen this week is ShowMeWhatsWrong.com. In fact, I was so pleased with this tool that I decided to do my One Minute Message on it this week as well. My first response to this tool when I accidentally came upon it was: “Wow! This solves a problem!” What more could you ask of a new tool?
The problem: With my new IT classes preparing to start in another month, one of my primary goals has been to launch the Computer Science Club on campus. I intend for one of the primary objectives of the club to be student computer (laptop or desktop) troubleshooting and repair. This not only provides the IT student with good repair bench experience, but it also provides our campus students with some value-added campus activity. In addition to the hardware/software repair experience, I want my IT students to develop good customer service skills and understand some portion of what a Help Desk would do.
ShowMeWhatsWrong.com is the perfect little, simple tool to assist with this project. I can envision the tool being used in the following manner by the IT students:
(1) Campus students will be informed about a web page on the student network where they can sign up for technical support for their personal laptop(s) or workstations.
(2) At the same time, the current class of IT students will determine which IT students, what times and timeframes and in what order they will address the requests. They will determine this at the start of each new class and follow their procedures throughout the course. Their activities on this campus “Help Desk” will be part of their grade.
(3) The IT student addressing the request for assistance will go to ShowMeWhatsWrong.com and generate a URL for their “client”. They will email this URL to the client.
(4) The client student receives the URL along with specific instructions on how to use the link.
(5) The client student follows the link and records the problem they are experiencing from their computer (assuming, of course, they have Internet access). The client student has 5 minutes of recording time to capture the issue. (Note: Students without Internet access may also do this recording from the campus labs and illustrate from a functional machine the problem that IT is to address.)
(6) Once the client student stops the recording, the site automatically processes, uploads and emails the video link to the IT student’s email address.
(7) Upon opening the email, the IT student is required to record (in an online form) the client’s information and the nature of the problem.
(8) The IT student downloads the video to a shared IT folder, logs the start time of the troubleshooting on the Help Desk documentation, and begins the troubleshooting process.
(9) IT students will be allowed to escalate the client ticket and request higher-level support from their classmates, if they are unable to resolve the problem in a timely, 24-hours.
(10) Upon completion of the troubleshooting, the IT student may request the client student bring the laptop in for repairs; or, they may call the client student and walk them through the correction; or, they may create a short video themselves and send it back to the client student for visual instructions. (Note: this part of the exercise is to develop the IT student’s ability to deliver customer service based on the client needs, desires, wants and communication types. Some client students will not want to receive an instructional video or instruction sheet; they will want personal attention.)
From such a simple tool, great academic experience can grow! I can’t wait to implement this activity and see how excited the IT students get about the experience they will receive. Great stuff! Love this tool!
Ginger,
ReplyDeleteYou are totally freaking me out right now. This app is so simple, and so amazing.
As a studio owner, my life has revolved around Digidesign’s Pro Tools recording software for a decade. I can’t even begin to recall how many versions I’ve purchased and how many systems I’ve had to set up and trouble shoot over the years. And, whenever I’ve had a technical issue (which understandably has to be solved immediately if you’re with a commercial client), time is of the essence.
In these situations, there are several valuable colleagues that I generally know I an call regardless of the time of day. When a problem occurs, I call them up, describe some weird situation to them, and then bark out the error message displayed on the screen. Unquestionably, in all of these situations, the most common response is, “without seeing your screen, I really can’t help right now”.
Wow, this tool seems really exciting. As a systems tool that you described, it makes complete sense. As a further resource outside the workplace or institution, it is still really exciting.
Trust me, over the next few days, I’m going to show this to a couple of friends. Chances are, we’ll have it up and running at IPR within weeks. Thank you. This has a lot of potential…
-Scott
Ginger,
ReplyDeleteThis is great. This could totally be incorporated into my Action Research project, which you can find out more about that here, http://web.me.com/jskohls/1/Blog/Entries/2010/2/20_Action_Research_Month_4.html. I like that there is a network of support, and that it is tied to a class.
I would like to see my IT folks get on board with this, or perhaps my computer teachers could facilitate a class based on troubleshooting. After all, we are supposed to be preparing students for the 21st century, no?