Hmmm...I don't think so

Old habits are hard to break.

And parents and educators are amongst the biggest resistors to change.  During my weekly follow ups with students and parents this became awfully evident. 


Parent: When will my child get their book, they have been in the course a month already?

Me: As we discussed when I called before this course does not have a print textbook, the materials are all online.
Parent: So I have to order it online?  I thought I paid for the class already.
Me:. No ma'am, its online in the course, your daughter can read it on the screen or download and print it if she chooses
Parent: how can I get a copy?
Me: well she can save a copy for you too, if you want to have your own.
Parent: well that's different.
Me: yes, online textbooks are pretty convenient, better for the environment and they save on shipping or returning the book.
Parent: well I know education is costing lost of money and I have heard that you all don't have enough books for students.  Perhaps after I print my copy I should send it back to you so you have one
Me: Hmmm....That's sweet of you to offer, but I don't think so.  I have my online version too.
Parent: OK, you let me know if you change your mind.  I know teacher's don't make much and you probably can't afford your own.

Now wasn't that sweet?

Racing my students

“Inspirations never go in for long engagements; they demand immediate marriage to action.”~Brendan Francis Behan


The race is on, the new term is afoot, and I am once again in third place.  Student A is on chapter 3 and student B is still not taking my calls.  Online has the capacity to excite, but excitement lasts about as long as a google rating for a page without content changes.  Constantly we E folk must provide new, more, different stimuli, or we lose our student quarry and must hunt them again.





Other people have a different approach, more of a correspondence course attitude-work is the student's responsibility.  I guess I'm just a spoonful of sugar kinda gal.   That said, my racing shoes are all laced up, and I am running and running.   

Gee I wish I had a magic umbrella.

 

Free Format Frenzy

I admit it.  I am an electronic communist.  Please don't blacklist me.

Open source, freely available software is in my opinion the way that we can bridge the gap between the economically elite and the fundamentally forgotten.  This beautiful internet is the great leveler in so much as anyone with access can have the vast majority of human knowledge for use or abuse as is their want.

E teaching and learning are all about taking advantage of this.  And yet, I still find students every day without the software, hardware, or access needed to use what we can provide.  Therefore I would like to thank Openoffice.org for the difference they are making in the lives of my students. Their goal

"To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format." "It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose."

About this time last century people were still denied their fundamental American rights because of illiteracy which denied them access to information.  A century later, individuals are being left behind again because of lack of access to information of the electronic variety.

But how can that be?  You are reading this post aren't you? According to the US National Broadband Plan

"Approximately 100 million Americans do not have broadband at home. Broadband-enabled health information technology (IT) can improve care and lower costs by hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming decades, yet the United States is behind many advanced countries in the adoption of such technology. Broadband can provide teachers with tools that allow students to learn the same course material in half the time, but there is a dearth of easily accessible digital educational content required for such opportunities. A broadband-enabled Smart Grid could increase energy independence and efficiency, but much of the data required to capture these benefits are inaccessible to consumers, businesses and entrepreneurs. And nearly a decade after 9/11, our first responders still lack a nationwide public safety mobile broadband communications network, even though such a network could improve emergency response and homeland security."

You can test your speed and help the US government track the progress of broadband growth by going to http://www.broadband.gov/qualitytest/?TB_iframe=true&height=500&width=470&qt=true

Two-thirds of Americans with internet access do not have broadband, 1 third has speed so much higher that it brings the nation-wide average up to the 4 Mbps standard.  However, 34/50 states have gone to only electronic downloadable format available for government documents via state sponsored websites.

I am a big believer in the Facebook standard. Let the advertisers pay.  Facebook according to its registration page, "It’s free (and always will be)."  How does this multi-billion dollar giant make that work?  They leverage your data (freely provided by you) into the world's best and most complete demographic segment list for marketing purposes and sell add space by targeted segment.

So wait does that make me an electronic capitalist?  

Well economic ideals aside, the point here is every American needs access to the software to desktop publish, every American needs access to broadband internet, and every American needs access to online education.

Side Note: I started to say "everyone" there instead of "every American," but decided I do not have the volume of knowledge to know what indigenous peoples of the world may need.  I am now second guessing the every American thing because I'm pretty sure the Amish are doing ok. I guess I am less concerned with those who CHOOSE a lack of access, than those who simply HAVE a lack of access. General-isms are SOOOO complicated...

Timing is everything.

Hall passes? Hah!

Asynchronous virtual learning has a distinct advantage over face to face schools. We don't care what time you learn. It is no longer about sitting in a seat at the right location at the right time, and if you want teacher help you do not need a hall pass.

What fun to IM class concepts at 11 pm!
What ease to subscribe to discussion boards and see my class comment in real time.

OK, maybe its nerdy fun...but it is fun and nerds are in the days (Zuckerberg, et al.)

In fact the only fly in the balm of this asynchronous lifestyle of mine has become my own tragic inability to conceptualize the EST->CST->MST->PST time zone conversion.

Many is the hour spent sitting in a gotomeeting alone pondering my fundamental resistance processing this elementary mathematical concept. Some people have taken pity and begun sending me meetings as meeting requests, rather than emails allowing phone-email interfaces to seamlessly process the times. Thank goodness for the wonders of that automated calendar. Others however continue to send IMs, emails, and postings or all other forms of madness and I without fail miss 1 in 3 start times when they are out of my own time

My Solution
This lead me in my ponderings to consider that perhaps the time zone itself has become an anachronism in today's E world. The railways which prompted time zone invention back in 1883 are certainly computerized these days. And in all deference to the solar-sidereal-lunar predecessors who tirelessly scanned the skies for details to tell the time and date, atomic clocks are now considered the timekeepers which synchronize my cell phone, laptop, and television. Perhaps it is time to consider a simplification, and all revert to GMT?

So what do you say? Lets move forward to a time zone free existence and base our times on something bigger.NOW IS THE TIME FOR STARDATES!

Get sound effects & royalty free music at AudioMicro.

The wheels are turning but the hamster is dead.

The progress wheel
of Death!!!

I was prepared when I began teaching for the rise and fall of fire drills, bus drills, shortened days, assemblies, testing and the myriad of other things we teachers take in stride as we weave out lesson plans in ad out like experts on the slolem slopes of schooling.

So it is fair to say that in the early days of online ed, I loved blended learning and full online teaching for its capability of weathering even the craziest day. Students and I could learn despite the wildly variant schedules of the world.

However, we have now reached a point where the capability and the technology are not in stride. Where the enthusiasm of unbridled learning meets the limitations of the physical world.

I am talking about LAG, the time span between click and functionality. Nothing messes with the online or blended learner or teacher's day more. We get a cup of coffee, text a friend, watch a show, do the laundry and yet still the progress daisy winks at us, smiling its evil smile, thwarting our every move.

Sometimes, we blame the lag on our local tech, so we switch computers, move to a different internet connection, switch from wifi to hardwire. The wheel still turns.

We call tech support, log out and back in, shut down and restart. The wheel still turns.

We minimize the process, simplify the plan, call tech support again, who can never replicate our experience. The wheel still turns.

In fact Lag has lasted so long that I could have purchased seed and dirt, planted and grown my own real daisy.

and somewhere in the middle of all of this certain cell phone companies have the gall to argue publicly on TV that they are the fastest connection ever. So I try using my phone browser, but the wheel still turns.

The wheel is green, black, white, blue, sometimes accompanied by a green bar style progress, which can sometimes put me in fits when it progresses to finished only to reset to 0 before starting the next process. Some wheels give me time estimates, which confusingly count down, but then suddenly count up. This may take 30 seconds or 57 minutes to download.

And Heaven forbid I should get impatient and click before the load completion has occurred, because I will either lock things up and have to reload from scratch, or I will double the processes without solving a thing.

Whats a multi-tasker to do when her hamster dies?

Them's fightin' words!

Some lessons the public still needs to learn

1) If the promises are too good to be true, then they likely aren't true.
2) Teaching and grading are different.
3) This is a JOB, not a hobby.

So this rant is brought to you by certain,
dare I say it? yes I dare

RUDE

Irritating

People

who have been disrespectful about E Teaching.

Hey gang here's the truth

Shopping for Online Learning is like Car Shopping. The better prepared the buyer, the better the experience. If you go in unprepared thinking we're all alike, you may get lucky and find what you are looking for, but more likely you will find the experience wanting.

Why? Because different Online experiences have significant differences. They range from correspondence school to University level and everything in between. If you want some tips see the organizations on the Pedagogy in Practice page

What I do for a living is teach. Many people are surprised by that because I work online. They think everything is set to automatic, and while that is one form of online learning typically used in credit recovery models and some of the less dynamic schools (personally I am not a huge fan so I am being upfront about the bias), it is not the best form.

Good online schools meet the learners where they are and build them up from there. I work with everyone from the struggling kid who is failing regular school, to the advanced kid who is trying to jumpstart college. I can honestly tell you I have more communication and more direct effect on their learning now than I ever did face to face.

Consider this, my typical classroom had 20 plus students whom I spoke with mostly as a group for 45 minutes in a day. In my online class, I can meet with a student for hours by phone, IM, online meeting rooms. I can have one on one exchanges daily with every kid. I can give instant feedback, and tailor it in ways I only dreamed of before.

Finally, let me say that I do sit around and eat bon bons in my jammies, but that does not make my job any less tiring. I work every day of the year, even Holidays. I work any hour my students need me, and some of them do not share my timezone. There are no longer summers, evenings nor weekends in my life. I literally have to engineer exit times, just to have a meal with my family. and when I do engineer those times, the work is always waiting for me in spades when I return, because there are no subs in online. So yes, there are perks, but my job is every bit as grueling as yours.

Rant complete. Thanks, I feel better :)

E Teacher's are also Tech Help for their students

Computer messages I wish would show up for my kids

FINALLY, ERROR MESSAGES EVERYONE CAN UNDERSTAND

Unknown Error:
  Windows has encountered an unknown error. The error is unknown because the guy who wrote this part of the code quit a while back and he was like really really smart and the rest of us are not really sure how this works or what to do.
  BTW, if your are that guy, please give us a call and let us know what to do.

You aren't expected to understand this

You really screwed up this time

Hardware Conflict: Your TV is Lonely

Stack overflow. Internal stack fall down and go boom.

PEDKAC -- Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair

---

---

You have not gotten any error messages recently, so here is a random one just to let you know that we haven't started caring.

User error - Replace user

Windows has not had an error in the past 10 minutes.
We don't really have anything else to say,
we're just really proud of ourselves right now.

Uh Oh, You're Screwed

---

This nifty piece of oOfficeSpam was submitted by The D'oh's and Woo Hoo's of Life.

| By Cube Dweller | 11:30 AM

Snow Days!!!!!

A student has emailed me from their home computer stating that they are having a snow day and cannot complete my assignment to email me their contact information.

???????

Have we met somewhere?

Ah the internet. I know your status, I know your picture, I know when you are on vacation and I know the things you like. I know this because you tell me, and I feel so close to you as a friend because I do.

My students too, communicate their lives in electronic media so that I feel a closeness with them.

So while checking out at the grocery store today I was asked to fill out one of those customer loyalty cards, you know-name address email can we send you spam?

Since I shop there a lot I did so, when I handed the card back to the checkout guy he starts to input the info, and gets sort of a smile on his face. He flips on the light to call the manager. The manager comes over and he shows her the card, and they both smile at me expectantly.

I waited, confused.

The manager finally starts to giggle, and says "Huh, I thought you'd be shorter."

Turns out a few years back for two years and 4 different courses I had talked to these kids in my online meeting room, grading their work and calling their houses. They were my students, and I would have passed them like strangers had it not been for that customer loyalty card.

Something they never told me in Teacher College

Someday you will want to go to the bathroom and you will be in a class, and you will have to hold it.

One of the great benefits of being an E teacher I have discovered is bathroom usage. This may seem like a silly benefit and if you work in the corporate world you have probably never been in this position:

So there I was, in the middle of a freshman level class with a lab experiment, when the school lunch started to work its magic on my tender insides. The bell was five minutes off. There were 23 bouncy trouncy 9th graders in various stages of creating hydrogen gas and then testing it for its explosivity in a test tube ( makes a cool pop if you've never done this lab). Clearly flame, explosions and freshmen is not the time to leave a class unattended even in an emergency.

Four minutes left-The nearest occupied classroom was 30 yards away because the teachers on either side were at lunch. There was no hope of rescue. I stood near the door so that if a passing teacher could have been flagged down I had hope, but no one came. I began to sweat.

Three minutes left-I contemplated my choices. I had none. I had to stick it through. I started reminding kids to clean up. Some were still testing, and I was getting testy.

Two minutes-I can make it. They are finishing...Its gonna be ok.

One minute-Oh thank god I was near the door because the most embarrassing smell just flew from my rear, and there was no hiding it. Hopefully no one inside the room noted it. Never again would Tuesday taco day be the same.

Bell- I was dodging and weaving pulling jukes a pro football player would be proud to call their own. I had made it. Relief was nearly well...orgasmic.

So here I am now 15 years later, recalling this moment when being in a face-2-face classroom became so vitally inconvenient and relishing that now as an online teacher I never face this again. My access unfettered, my instruction unhindered...

...at last I am free to hit the mute button whilst I flush.