6701 Week 5 - Is it over already?!

After a little more sleep and reflection, the rubric Anne provided for writing the final paper contained all the necessary guidance to produce an “A” product. Creating such a rubric can be challenging however—at least for me. I have found that moving away from the subjective to objective in terms of evaluating written papers is difficult, but invaluable for students.

An interesting discussion amongst classmates piqued my interest regarding the format of the final paper.

“Why does it have to be .rtf?”

“Word is better for formatting, please accept a .doc file.”

“PDF is the widely accepted standard.”

My initial reaction, “What’s the big deal? That is how Anne wants it turned in.” However, Anne revealed the main reason, something I am normally sensitive to. That being, not all students have access to expensive word processing software, so requiring .rtf instead of .doc/.docx/.pdf allows the use of most any word processing program. Ha! I fell right into the “haves” that are ignorant of the “have-nots” scenario. Boo.

I am so grateful for Anne and her roles in this course as an instructor, social director, program manager, and technical assistant.

E mālama mau au i nā haʻawina o nei papa, he kahua nō ia.
I will always care for the lessons from this class, it is definitely a foundation.
 
Me ka ʻoiaʻiʻo,
Liko
 
What Surprised Me the Most

How quickly these past 5 weeks have flown by.

What I Liked the Best

Learning about my own limits, physically and mentally, and the challenge of learning so much so quickly

What I Liked the Least
See "What I Liked the Best."

What to Keep or Change for My Courses

Change: Rubrics for everything, either shared with students or just for myself. 

Change: Add a weekly wrap-up similar to what Anne provides, summarizing the key points from class discussions and assignments.

The Final Final Paper

Yay! The paper is done. Not the best work, though I feel pretty confident about it. The final paper is an actual online course proposal. So my course will be “History of Hula: A Living Tradition.” Is that a catchy title or what?

It is exciting to think that by the end of four courses in this program, I will have a full fledged course. Okay, some bad news. The deadline for the final paper was 12:00 am Midnight, Friday 02/04/11. I emailed Anne at around 10:30 pm letting her know that there is a high probablity that it would be a bit late. Had some difficulties with creating my own rubric to grade my own paper. Yikes!

Well, the sad part is that I did finish at 1:48 am. But even sadder is that the Blackboard system shuts down between 1:45 am and 3:30 am for weekly maintenance—on Fridays!

&^%$#@!

So now, I am doing all I can to finish all my coursework so I can focus on preparing for my workshops and the trip to teach. It is around 2:37 am right now. Almost an hour left. Maybe just a little nap...

Liko

Rationale for “History of Hula: A Living Tradition.”

Hula is the traditional dance of the Hawaiian people. Sacred, religious and spiritual, entertaining, hula is perpetuated through the generations from antiquity until today. The Hawaiian renaissance in the 1970s revitalized pride in Hawaiian language and the arts, delivering the culture from near extinction. Today, hula enjoys worldwide respect and interest. As a Native Hawaiian scholar, cultural practitioner, and technologist, I propose offering an online course to provide students locally and internationally, a historical perspective of hula. Through a chronological, visual, aural, and textual survey of the major time periods in hula, students will be able to evaluate and identify the significant hula styles prevalent today.

Tuesday Deadline!

Talk about stress! Attempting to finish the draft of my final paper before midnight Tuesday was challenging. Had to take some time off from work. I can blame it on being ill and falling behind. Okay, sure-I will.

It seemed a bit unfair to be expected to write a whole paper for half the grade, while also using strong academic writing, when most of the writing we have done in the class so far are mainly discussion board posts.

My big attempt at the scholarly writing needed only to be a couple of paragraphs but ended up almost two pages long. I need the practice. For the final paper, Anne provided rubric, self-assessment guideline, which informed us what an “A” paper should contain. What a goal!

I turned in my draft exactly at midnight Tuesday--the deadline. The draft was weak, no transitional sentences from paragraph to paragraph and not much in terms of academic references.

Midnight on the nose!

The final final is due Friday. Wish me luck!

Aloha for now,

Liko