The rolling sands of time

Today a student pointed out no less than five broken links in a single area of my school.

I diligently investigated and determined that they worked for me, yes, BUT they were not working when I was logged in as her.  Confused, as this is a rolling enrollment course I reached out to a former student to ask if she had had any problems.  She had not.

I was baffled, having changed nothing.  What was different about this student?  why HER?

Then suddenly it hit me.  Her rolling enrollment is not set to start until July 1.  She was trapped in time between a time when her login works and a time where the course is operational, and I was so deep in the weeds with my current course load that I had failed to connect the name with a student who was not yet fully enrolled.

It felt like an episode of the Science Channel series "Through the Wormhole."  I am still waiting for a Morgan Freeman voice-over to tell me that what is really wrong is my perception of the student is not as the student actually is, and some physicist will explain that we are all just grains of sand existing in mutually co-existant multi-verses or something like that.

Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman

This rolling enrollment model might yet roll me into a fetal position from which I can never return.

The Existential Extension Policy

Due dates?

It would seem, dear readers that our lives have become lost and the meaning of due has been blurred to the extent that the concept of due may diminish and cease to exist.

It is an interesting pondering really given that due dates themselves only became established in the last half of the last century.  Historically dues dates were not only not necessarily dates, but they most certainly did not involve a time stamp.

Consider the conscripted soldier of the US civil war. In 1862 the President called for the raising of 300,000 more troops.  However a year later, in 1863, Wisconsin districts were given a number of men by the state and "urged to meet their quota."  So after a year, these men still had not reported.  But at the time to be fair, this was not an official draft, just a call to arms. Out of the 19 thousand some requested at the federal level from Wisconsin, only 4,537 men were actually further requested by the governor, of these 19 deserted and 1,622 just didn't come.  Many sited the statement about arrival time which read "as field and traveling conditions allow."  That was it for a timeline
[Source: THE CIVIL WAR DRAFT IN PLOVER AND STEVENS POINT: A STUDY IN EFFORTS, ATTITUDES, FRUSTRATIONS, AND RESULTS By David Ellison (UWSP)]  In other words, by gubernatorial order, you could show up when and if you could.


Now let us consider the baby due date, nominally considered until quite recently to be nine months after conception.  However, more recently stated as 40 weeks after conception, 280 days from the last menstrual period, and 266 days from conception. World health organizations made an attempt for a universal lunar months method to measure pregnancy length i.e. 28 days = 1 month x 10 = 10 months pregnant but this was not accepted world-wide. This has just made the confusion worse, with some health care providers using the 10 lunar months method now, while others do not. [Source: WHO]

Once timekeeping in the country was limited to dates punctuated by the common time frames of  dawn, noon and dusk but the advent of industrial transportation (train schedules), radio, and television systematically began to inform the public.  The final hurdle is often proclaimed to be the space race which demanded an ever more delineated time schedule for implementation.  Business is now timed to the minute and second.

But....BUT

have all of these deadlines really helped anything?

Enter the decline of the due.  In education the trend would seem to show that due dates are on the decline in favor of extension policies, IEP's, 504 and plain old good sense.

Is it important that a 4th grade know his times tables?  YES.  That is a fundamental skill which other ideas build upon.

Is it important that a 4th grade know his multiplication tables on Tuesday? 

or can he know them on Friday?  

Does it matter if the next skill is not yet being taught?

What lesson are we teaching? Multiplication tables or schedule tables?

To be fair, I understand the inconvenience factor for the face-to face teachers of the world.  But having taught now in online rolling enrollment, I have to say it is time to give it up.   Due dates are a thing of the past.  The ultimate deadlines that still exist are related to course end and beginning of teaching the next school alone.  So all of you lesson planners out there...sorry...but you need to relax.

Be brave. Try the new stuff!!!!

OK fellow E teacher's, so your browser just changed to version 6 billion point twelve.  Your life is now consumed by hours of revising what used to work in your online class, and your four year old twins have started talking to you via skype because its the only way to get to you.  Sound familiar?

How can we solve this problem?

Some Tips:
1) Just because its called an upgrade does not mean its an improvement.
2) You can often preview upgrades by becoming a Beta tester.  If it screws up, drop back a level and no harm no foul.
3) treat Beta tests like scientists if you have time. But if you are a normal person, remember that updates can often wait.  If you were in a face to face class you wouldn't generally start a new textbook curriculum series on March 12.  So don't feel the need to accept the upgrade.

Draft dodgers are us

I am guilty of losing my drafts.


Today has been one of those days when I realize that all of that beautiful work  I had been doing.  All of that blood sweat and tears was not meeting with results for the simplest of reasons.  I forgot to turn it from draft mode into visible to all.  Sigh.  Lots of clarifying to do now.

I personally waffle between two schools of thought--Avoid the draft and embrace the draft

Avoiding the Draft--This perilous act means that I use live pages every time I make an edit.  It's not a terrible thing except when dealing with difficult to modify pages, or overachieving students who are looking at the live before you make your edit and after.  Another pit fall of avoiding drafts and working live is that if you break something in your page, you may have difficulty backtracking.  I've been doing this long enough that I have backups of everything, but my backups are not always backups of the most recent draft-so some repairs can be lost in the shuffle.

Embracing the Draft-  By editing in draft mode I avoid the pitfalls above, but darned if I don't screw up and do what I did this week more often than I'd care to.  In my particular LMS I can have a variety of hidden working drafts at any given time, and depending on what event side tracks my over stimulated brain these drafts can be lost in limbo in perpetuity until I suddenly recall (a day late and a dollar short) what I was intending to go live with .

So which is better a bad plan which I execute cautiously with variable results, 

or a good plan which I variably fail to execute?

 

8 Big Mistakes Online teachers make

In a world that moves at the speed of instant messaging, it pays to think first.
Common mistakes
1) not checking out the student. Do you get to know the kids and their learning environment?  Do you ask them when and where they will work? do you know if they've taken classes before?  and were they successful?  Getting to know your student can make getting them to complete a much easier task.
2) not lesson planning.  teaching 101 right?  I am amazed at the number of teachers who let the course teach for them, and do not actually read the materials let alone plan their lessons and share the plan with students.  Basically good teaching requires teachers to think through what they will be teaching and how it will be assessed and how and when they expect a student to complete it.  Asynchronous or semi-synchronous teachers may scoff and say they don't care how and when- but they do need to know how long it will take and communicate that to students.  This project will take you a minimum of 10 hours to complete including 3 for research, 2 for writing, 2 for reading peer papers, 1 for writing critiques of peer papers, and 1 for reading the critiques you receive and 1 hour for rewriting based on critical analysis.  Let em know up front and you get a better result.
3) being unrealistic about how students learn best.  Online learning and learning in general are not one size fits all,  when was the last time you surveyed your class for the percent of lessons based on lecture vs reading, hands on vs video.  Its ok to have duplicate lessons for learners with different styles.
4) commiting to teaching an online course without first looking at best practices for tech. how many times has a student had incompatible software to turn in work to you?  You need to stay on top of software that allows saving and opening in multiple formats or commit to using nearly universal formats like pdf or txt.
5) not checking out the school. Institutions are not created equal.  Make sure you are putting your reputation in the hands of someone who does it well.
6) taking on too much too soon. If you have not taught online or blended before ask your employers to limit class size or number of sections, and ask them to provide faculty mentors.  If they don't do this already, you probably don't want to work for them.  Remember the time commitment for you the first time will be similar to your first year of teaching.  It will all be new.  There are new keywords and acronyms (LMS, SCORM, CID,.....) and you will benefit if you get help.
7) Thinking that since it is an online course, it is OK to "copy and paste." Teachers fall under the education standard of fair reproduction for one time use in many cases, however if you ever plan to reteach that course that is now not one time use.  Good site for more info on fair use
8) Being unprepared or unwilling to cooperate with a virtual team. Depending on your institution you will have all of the people you had in brick and mortar schools.  Principals, curriculum directors, tech people, department heads, and co-workers.  So think through what you did to build relationships with people IRL and think how will that be interpreted online.  Remember emails have tone and context, even if you didn't mean them to.  So be careful.  Does it need to be put in writing?  Should you call and chat or have a live meeting?  Because once you text it, IM it, myspace it, blog it or email it its out there on record and you can never get it back.

Today's topic was inspired by The US news and World Report 8 Big mistakes online learners make article of March 25, 2010.


Read the article at
8 Big Mistakes Online Students Make - US News and World Report

I wanted to follow it up with 8 common mistakes online teacher's make.