The Challenge Called "Week 4"

ʻAnoʻai e nā hoa heluhelu,
Greetings friends,

Is it Sunday, the end of the 4th week of a 5-week class. Already?!

Turbulent might be a good word to describe this past week. 

• On Tuesday morning, I learned from my new dentist that a dental malady required a tooth extraction which was the foundation for a two-tooth bridge. 
• On Wednesday morning, my tooth was extracted and I returned to work immediately. After working a full day, arrived at home, ate, and promptly slept for 12 hours.
• On Thursday, feeling okay. However, it was our 15th anniversary. Small celebration with the best Japanese food in Santa Rosa for early dinner. Returned home satiated, and promptly slept for another 10 hours.
• On Friday, feeling better. The big anniversary celebration that evening at our favorite restaurant. Returned home completely stuffed, worked on homework for a little while, but eventually slept again for 8 hours.
• On Saturday, feeling pudgy. Put some extra time in the office working six hours. Did a little homework. Returned home exhausted, just went to sleep--not eating.
• Today, feeling great! Woke up early, started on homework, practiced chanting and hula. Finished all my assignments. 

Mahalo ke Akua!
Mahalo to my Sweetie too!

Only one week left of class and then Keauhou, Kona. Lots to do this coming week, I still need to prepare my lessons for the workshops I will be teaching. Good thing is I will be using assessment techniques to measure student learning outcomes in three ways: pre-instructional, formative, and summative.

But even before those tasks, there is a final paper to write. Focus, focus, focus.

Blessings to your and yours!

Ke aloha nō,
Liko

What Surprised Me the Most

How little I knew about rubrics and their multiple uses.

What I Liked the Best

Learning that I am moving from my traditional role as a technologist toward administrative tendencies. I have to add that Anne provided an audio file this week too!

What I Liked the Least
My inability to completely immerse myself in the huge amounts of reading this past week.

What to Keep or Change for My Courses

Change: Consider using rubrics for future learning assessment.

Keep: Providing text alternative when using audio files in the course.

Week 3 Wrap Up

ʻAnoʻai e nā hoa heluhelu,
Greetings friends,

It has definitely been one crazy week. Sure, with school, but other "life" things as well. This course is halfway over--which is difficult to believe. Reading is becoming easier. My academic writing is improving. Well, at least I think so. Been attempting to avoid the feeling of "being behind" or "trying to catch up" with little success. There's always next week!

Something made me pause this week during the reading about course development and accessibility. Does anyone I know use a screen reader when cruising the web? Seems like important technology, but how many people know there is such a thing available? How much does it cost? When doing web development, is there a screen reader available to verify accessibility?

Many questions and open to responses.

E hoʻi ana kēia i ka hiamoe. Ke makahiamoe nei au.
Going to bed. I am sleepy.

Blessings to your and yours!

Ke aloha nō,
Liko

What Surprised Me the Most

That our reading assignments contained many dead links or references to old technology such as "floppy disks."

What I Liked the Best

The research our team performed and produced. During my own research I found some interesting and valuable resources about corporate training.

What I Liked the Least

Not being able to communicate instantly with my team members regarding our project, particularly on the due date.

What to Keep or Change for My Courses

Change: The expectations for myself and my students regarding my participation in discussion questions for the students. Notably, much less participation on my part in the group setting. But on assignments turned in for review by me, that is where my feedback to the student will be focused.

Keep: Technology orientation for students to evaluate familiarity and comfort with computers and related software.

The Group Project - Complete!

ʻAnoʻai e nā hoa,
Greetings friends,

We made it! It was close, but I posted the final version of our paper at 11:19 pm, just before the midnight due date/time.

This exercise in collaborative learning has been quite an experience. Working in a group strictly by email without the benefit of first speaking or meeting my teammates except through text was challenging.

I found myself imagining the sound of the voices of my teammates and the hint of what they might look like given their name, the way they write, and the "tone" of their "written voice." I am sure you have done the same when reading novels or books. The author normally helps you out though, by describing the physical attributes or the texture of a voice.

"Her bright blue eyes were in stark comparison to the dark thick wavy hair that fell about her shoulders."

I just made that up. Okay, back to the point. Which is....oh yeah--which is that it helps me to meet or speak to someone on the phone prior to trying to communicating strictly through email. Despite this challenge, I feel the project turned out well and that we collaborated successfully to complete the assignment.

If I had to do it again, I would go for a smaller group. There were more people than roles. Oh, and since no one volunteered to be leader, guess what? Yep, I appointed myself. (Okay, I will wait until you are done shaking your head and sighing with disbelief.) For those of you that "know-me-know-me" it is not surprising. For myself, I truly did expect someone else to step up. It was fun!

One advantage of group work online is the ability to do the email trail and the asynchronous communication. Of course, that is a disadvantage too if you need confirmation on changing something or waiting for a response to a question. Just like global workforces though, time zone differences need to be considered. One of our team resides on the east coast.

The collaboration tools on BlackBoard (BB) need improving. Our team decided, after a several days of using BB, to return to Basecamp for our project. We made heavy use of the writeboard features. The other nice feature of Basecamp is that the text of a message is included in the email. Unlike BB, if you subscribe to a thread to receive email notices that someone else has posted to the thread, you are required to log in to see the text. Not receiving the posted text in the email notice must be related to liability and copyright. Just a guess.

Me ka ʻoiaʻiʻo,
Sincerely,
Liko

See an image of someone I admire with blue eyes and dark wavy hair. A former Miss World USA winner.

A Funny Thing Happened in the Office Today...

ʻAnoʻai kākou,
Greetings all,

So today I am sitting in a meeting at work with my manager, my new supervisor, and a department chair (names not given for privacy reasons). This is a normal weekly meeting. At one point my jaw drops because the topic of discussion matches exactly the topic issue that my classmates and I have selected for our group project.

How do organizations provide technology support to instructors during online course development?

Holy smokes! Talk about fidgeting in my seat. It took massive amounts of self-control to keep myself from asking questions. Thankfully my restraint paid off. The department chair shared that a few years back she and another faculty were paid stipends to do an outreach. The intent was to provide technical training for any fellow faculty desiring assistance in developing courses for online delivery. Unfortunately, not many folks took advantage of the program.

The team project is going okay. Using Basecamp has been helpful. The challenge has been gaining consensus. I know all my teammates are working professionals and go-getters. I am re-learning for myself that I like to plan and make sure that we agree, or at least have some consensus before moving to the next stage. Nothing really new since I am an ENFJ on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator.

The due date of our group paper is definitely the “x-factor” in driving the team. The paper is due Saturday instead of the usual midnight on Sunday.

No matter how “I” think we should get there, as long as we do. So, lots more research to do which of course means lots more reading. I am learning lots!

ʻO au iho nō me ka ʻoiaʻiʻo,
Sincerely,

Liko Puha