Day: October 30, 2011

Happy Halloween! (Retrieved Image from Microsoft Online)

This week my nightmare is gone or one could say, it was never really there.  It was a way to look at the world to face real life problems brought on by stress. Going to school is creating a few financial problems I cannot resolve. Furthermore, I am under a lot of stress trying to create a course an instructor will use.  Working as part of a team means, I cannot accomplish the task on my own. That is pretty scary… because I am not in total control of the project. One the other hand, it is like working with a safety net. Most likely, the team will not let me fall to my death so to speak. It takes a lot of trust and in that area I am a few quarts short.

I suppose most survivors have to learn to trust again.  In my case, I do it very infrequently.  I do not like giving others power over me if I can avoid it. Anything I have succeeded at was done mostly through my own efforts. Some of those efforts were almost super human. Any time I have failed, it was partly because of others. I re-learned that lesson when I was part of a team in one of my certification program courses. I react pretty strongly to being devalued. I spent a lot of years being treated as though I had nothing of value to offer.  I spent a lot of years being battered into compliance. This has been especially true in the workplace.

So, I need to get my team working with me to develop the course for Charlene. She is the person using the Bb Vista site and teaching in the classroom. Most of the content will be determined by her. I have presented her with the syllabus. Obviously it was only a first draft; however, to be on schedule and complete this project in time, I have to depend on the time she can spend with me. Needless to say, she is a very busy person.

I have decided what tools might be useful to Charlene and will now wait until she responds to my offerings. Next, I need to start setting up modules.  This means I need to create files to upload to the Bb Vista application. I need to know what content Charlene wants in them. I will be meeting with Robin this week to clarify a timeline and to find out if I am on the right track.

The hard work is just around the corner. I will need to create a course for Charlene, at the same time I create a course for a potential employer, that I can teach. I am using a free application by Bb Vista and dislike it already. Each entry has to be read and then tweaked to get it right. I don’t like how it sets up; but it is a bit more user-friendly than Instructive Canvas, which I first hoped to use. I really like Wikispace; but it is open to the public and much easier to copy. I want the intellectual property to be mine and protected.

I keep trying to figure out how I can manage to show a potential employer that my work is designed to focus on the learner and not the instructor. Many instructors may differ on the whole concept of on-line teaching and “best practice.” I have chosen to try to teach again, because I do find the idea of constructivist thinking adequate.  I want to teach in an environment that uses technology and Web 2.0. Why?  Because I have done it the other way through out my studies and didn’t like it. I don’t want to exclusively lecture, present power points and make my students power down.

I want my students to be self-directed learners and have the skills they need to face the technologies they will have to work with in the future. I want to prepare them to keep working and growing on their own through such things as personal learning systems (PLS). Teaching is changing and I think many instructors are going to fall through the cracks unless they change their thinking. Institutions are far too conservative for their own good.  Less money from the state and tight budgets will drive colleges to move toward more on-line courses. Who will teach these courses?