JOYSTECHTOOL

During the past two weeks Memorial Day weekend has come and gone. That week was spent planting flowers and vegetables, painting our house and cleaning the yard. I must admit my husband has done most of the work. We have only one side of the house to finish.

Since I am waiting for the textbook to arrive and the LMS Instructure Canvas to become available at Bellevue College, not much has been done on the site. I have watched a considerable amount of video and still need to work with the text and the system to begin to understand how it works or will work for the course that will be placed online.

Most of the past two weeks were spent trying to get the issues of the new move at work resolved. Having been downstairs in the enrollment office, going upstairs to the advising area was very different and seemed a bit strange, at first. Change is always a stressful time; but I think we have adjusted to the environment quite well. It seems that everything changes and mostly for the benefit of students at Bellevue College. Since I am a student there, I find the changes most beneficial and much easier to accept than some of the more outdated ways of handling student issues that were in place a few months ago.

One of the issues that concern me is the emphasis placed on keeping a positive attitude in most work places. When you are working with people who have less than healthy egos and maybe some insecurities, it can be difficult to keep your attitude positive.  Our attitudes determine how we behave or respond to a variety of situations. If we are successful in our work environment, we develop a more positive attitude. If we have had bad experiences in the workplace and been disappointed, it may affect how we view the situations encountered in other working environments. Or we find ourselves confronting a bad attitude within ourselves.

My job at the college is a stepping stone to bigger things in the future. I want to teach online as an adjunct instructor in area community colleges. There is going to be great challenges working in this capacity. My job now is helping me figure out how best to deal with the challenges I will face in the future. Each of us have triggers that signal us and trigger our negative or bad attitude. Knowing these triggers help us remain positive even during the most disturbing and upsetting times. I have learned that when you build a circle of positive relationships at work, the negative people don’t seem so daunting. You can balance the negative relationships with positive relationships.

Now that being said, I do have a few concerns. The positive “Stepford Wives” attitude makes me wonder if people have forgotten how to speak out when injustices occur at work. When something is really wrong in the workplace, picking your battles very carefully is a must. I have a tendency to see through crap. My crap detector often works overtime. I have to carefully think about what I can do to protect myself and maybe make it easier for the next person walking down the path I am traveling. In the past , I have taken the high road and have had to walk away from a job. It took a terrible toll on my finances and mental and physical health; but it was a step I needed to take to preserve my integrity and ethics.

Meaningful conflict in the workplace assures its growth. It is necessary for effective problem solving and for effective interpersonal relationships, states Susan M Heathfield in her article, Fight for What’s Right: Ten Steps to Encourage Meaningful Conflict.  I think conflict can be highly unpleasant. Nevertheless, if your workplaces management tries to stop all conflict between employees, there are fewer opportunities for growth. “Group think” is counter-productive to healthy organizational growth. It poses a barrier for creative problem solving. It is also unhealthy for people in a work environment to avoid all conflict and maintain a false positive attitude. The video below is an example of how self-regulating yourself to go along with the group can be fatal and does have consequences.

I am including a video on these ideas and concepts. Also, I am including an argument against positive thinking concepts and theory.  I think the following excerpt from Five Big Problems with Positive Thinking, by Jeremy McCarthy, says it all.

2.  The public consumption of happiness prescriptions far outstrips the research.  The media jumps on snippets of research suggesting that happiness leads to greater health and longevity.  They do this because the “don’t worry be happy” message is appealing to consumers.  Everyone wants to believe they could have greater control over their lives by simply changing the way they think.  Research that supports this idea gets promoted loudly and widely.  Non-scientist consumers mistakenly judge the findings based on the amplitude of the exposure, rather than on the strength of the research.

3.  It could be used to manipulate the work force.  Another valid criticism of positive thinking is that it is a convenient tool for governments and corporations to control the minds of the masses.  Encouraging people to maintain a happy outlook in the face of less-than-ideal conditions is a good way of keeping citizens under control in spite of severe societal problems, or keeping employees productive while keeping pay and benefits low.

4.  It ignores “psychological flexibility.”  Psychological flexibility is the ability to tap into the psychological resources that we have at the times when we most need them.  This theory rejects the notion that we should all be striving for greater optimism and more positive thinking styles.  Rather, we should be grooming our understanding of when it is best to use optimism and when is it best to use pessimism.  All of our emotions serve us in some way, so rather than focusing on positive emotions, we should use the entire spectrum of emotional responses that we have at our disposal, continually improving our abilities to use the right ones in the right situations.

I have spent hours looking at the videos on how to use Instructure Canvas. I am still waiting for the new textbook. Apparently it was not ordered by the salesperson and this has delayed the project a bit. I will be working most of the summer to get this imformation into the new system. I am looking forward to getting the book and to begin reading it.

I have been busy with the band and practicing for our gig that was perfomed on Saturday night. Inspite of all the practice there was a lot that could have been improved. Performing on stage is much like trying to get the design for the course worked on. There is always new improvements that will have to be made. Just putting the course online doesn’t guarantee everything will work the way it is suppose to work.

There are some really interesting ways to put the course up online. Charlene is interested in using the assignments method of teaching this class, rather than putting up modules. I have selcted a video that clearly tells the user of Canvas how to do just that.

Grading in Instructure Canvas is seems like a very easy task. I am including a video on how this can be done.

Finally, Charlene wants the activities of her students to be done collaboratively. Canvas lends itself to this type of activity.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day.  We spend a quiet day enjoying our yard. I planted some tomato plants and helped my husband clean up the yard and gardens. It was warm, in the eighties. I sat on the porch and watched the birds and busy insects do their spring dance around the plants and flowers, as the sweet scents pleasured my senses.

There was no flowers, no cards and no phone calls from my children or grandchildren. I had talked with my daughter earlier in the week. Guess the grandchildren are too busy with their lives. I have gotten use to this turn of events through the years. I suspect somehow, in some way this will all come back to them in one form or another. Some younger people, today, do not seem to respect their elders in the United States. This is sad. Most of them do grow older and begin to realize how much this means to them when they have children and grandchildren and they want to have this contact with them.

Today I have been watching videos on Canvas and each time I watch them I learn something new and exciting. I am getting a bit anxious about putting this course up online. There is so much to learn. I am not certain where to start. I find the whole process a challenge and just love the thought of it! I cannot wait to get started!

I met with Robin last week and will meet with Charlene this week. We are waiting for the textbooks to arrive. When they do, we will begin creating a syllabus. Canvas is so different.  I am not certain how to begin. I think it will be a process of figuring it out as we go. I really like the information I found so far. It is easy to figure out and the videos make everything really clear. They can be found on Youtube too.

One of the best tutorials so far can be seen at the following: https://howardcc.instructure.com/courses/32484. The beauty of watching these tutorials is it gives the designer a good look into the various ways you can set up your course and navigate in Canvas. I have seen quite a few of these and find this one particularily interesting. I am hoping that Bellevue College will have something similiar for their faculty to watch.

After meeting with Charlene, she seems to like using Turnitin. This application or tool can easily be used in Canvas: https://howardcc.instructure.com/courses/32484. If the instructor is using this tool for papers in the course it can help with some of the issues involved in cheating. I am including a canvas link to turnitin information, as well as Youtube videos.

I met with Charlene last week. I showed her what I was doing and learning in Canvas. Unfortunately, the videos did not work when I showed her the one I had put in Canvas.. Today, the videos came up and were really great! However, when I tried to update the syllabus, Canvas refused to load. Apparently their website is down for the moment.

On top of this,  I spent several hours trying to get documents attached to my email. I finally had to dump all my favorites  The temperature is about 69 degrees outside; and I have clothes to wash and weeds to pull (everyone got a letter telling us to clean up our yards for Mother’s Day). Right now none of that is happening. To make matters worse, I was called by my supervisor to work for a teammate, this morning. I did not go because I had so much to do. I lost money staying home fighting with a silly computer. Go figure!!

It seems it never rains but it pours. Since I cannot get to Instructure Canvas to get the information I need and to input what needs doing, I am going to watch YouTube video on how to operate Canvas. I have spent many hours now doing just that…watching videos. I am getting pretty frustrated. I have so many unknowns and am supposed to be producing course material at this point. That is not happening! Charlene gave me an instructors manual to go with the textbooks that never arrived because the sales rep forgot to order them. I am not certain when the book will come into Charlene’s department. One more frustration to work around. Do you suppose there are internet trolls that create all this havoc for fun?

I am trying to figure out if in five weeks I have accomplished anything. I meet with Robin on Thursday of this week and feel like I will not be able to show her what the system is capable of doing. I wish I had a few more hours in the day to get all this done. One positive in this situation is the fact that with a little luck eventually everything will work like it is supposed to do. Will I have the time to do what I was trying to get done today? Probably not!

So back to my tale of woe. I had band practice for the last three weeks in my lead’s garage. When I got home last night, I could not sleep. I was up until 3:30 AM. Right now this page is out of focus. While I am trying to work with a misbehaving computer and progs, I am trying to get my laundry done. I have a unmade bed, clothes all over the top of that unmade bed and have banished my poor husband to the front yard to start pulling weeds. Now, if looks could kill, I’d be toast. Okay not really, he went rather willingly. I think he isn’t really impressed with our computers at the moment either!

This all reminds me of why I asked to study under Charlene again. She has the classroom experience and some feel for what will work online. She seems to know instinctively. On the other hand, I think I am showing her how to use the technology to get a totally online class up-to-date with the tools available in Web 2.0. She seems pretty hesitant about using blogs and feedback forms. She has seen that the students in her class have a hard time with attaching documents to emails. I suppose a blog will be too difficult for them. However, grade school children are using these tools. Maybe grade school children are more advanced technological then college students…now there’s a thought!

Our next problem is trying to get a good group activity together for our online course. There are many different ideas and ways to do this. Maybe if Bellevue College offers training on Instructure, the instructors would get more insight on how to use open source materials and technology. I certainly could use course like this myself. I am getting a bit frustrated trying to learn the ins and outs of Canvas via only video tutorials. I need someone with more knowledge to “hand hold” me at this point. Did I really say that?

I am including a video on the future use of technology. Can you imagine have a bad day with these precious creations?

I have met with the program chair of the Criminal Justice department. I am creating the totally online course based on her requirements. I have seen the Introduction to Criminal Justice textbook and think it will be more than adequate. I have read most of the Instructor’s Resource Manual with Test Bank by Lisa Anne Zilney. The guide is very user-friendly. I am anxiously awaiting the text book’s arrival.

Included with the textbook and manual is a PowerLecture DVD-ROM. It includes lecture, power point presentations, a test bank, concept videos and many more features that make this a most interesting tool to work with. I will be meeting with Charlene to find out what it will look like when we place the course into Instructure Canvas. I think it will be most interesting and a real challenge to come up with ideas that will work.

Next week I hope to explore the textbook’s online content. I have not had the time to get into the system to explore what is available in that forum. Apparently this publisher offers the instructor a variety of tools to help in the creation of an excellent course online or in the classroom. I have not seen anything quite this thorough to date. The textbook doesn’t deviate too much from the early text by Bohm and Haley. It does seem to be far more learner and instructor friendly. I am hoping I can start condensing the content I am finding into something usable for the course, based on Charlene’s specifications.

Apparently  my Alma Mater, the University of Utah has decided to use the Canvas system. It is supposed to be more user-friendly. So far, I have been struggling with it and probably have not watched enough videos on how to use the system. The more I can learn about how to use it, the easier it will be to use it. I am including a video on how to migrate courses from Bb Vista to Canvas.

I was raised in the Minnesota Northwoods. I lived in a small town called Pequot Lakes. It was named after an Indian chief from a small tribe in eastern Connecticut. The most common  explanation for the town’s name comes from the Wikipedia and was found “… in a 1936 interview [with] Laurence Anderson, who moved to the town in the mid 1890s. He stated [per Wikipedia], “…a daughter of Waubanaquot, Chief of the White Earth Tribe, was named O-Pequot and lived north of the town on the north end of Sibley Lake. She graciously allowed her dugout home to be used as a school and a church for the early settlers of the town. When she died, she was buried in the town cemetery.” We never really knew where the town’s name came from. Interestingly enough, this same town would and could not [state law did not allow the selling of liquor to American Indians] let American Indians in the local bars to drink. Most of my Indian friends lived off the reservation in poverty or nothing more than tar paper shacks.

It never really occurred to us to discriminate or notice that my friends and classmates were different. I did not notice their poverty or nationality. Our school-house had all grades up to K-12 in one building. Our classroom held about 20 children. At least fifty percent of the children in the school, including the teachers, were American Indian. While my mother and father built their own home and a motel, it never occurred to me that American Indians did not have the same freedoms my family did. There were a lot of people who did not have money in this small resort town. I am certain that there was crime in the town. However, we never locked our doors when we left our home. Our neighbors didn’t either. My brother and mother and I would walk to the town to go to the movies every week or when the movie changed in the summer. It was about a five-mile walk. We were never afraid, when we walked to town and back in the dark, not of the animals or other people.

By the time I was twelve, my mother and father came to a parting of the ways. My mom and I moved to St. Cloud, Minnesota which had a population of 15,000 people. To me it was the “Big City.”  It was a ninety percent Catholic town; and after living in a town of less than 550 people it seemed huge and strange. There were Catholic churches about every ten blocks. In Pequot Lakes there was only a mission church and the sisters came once a year to stay at our neighbor ladies home, so they could drive to town and teach us heathens God’s word. I suppose I never really learned past the heathen part. It was a mortal sin to sit or attend a Lutheran service; but in Pequot Lakes I attended services with my aunts from my dad’s side almost every Sunday, when our church didn’t have services.

In St. Cloud I learned what it meant to be unacceptable. Since my mom was divorced, she was an outcast. Since I was somewhat of a heathen, so was I. My mom sent me to Catholic school and it became very clear by the time I was high school age, that not only was I an outcast, but I was treated by the popular boys like I was a walking disease. It wasn’t long before I quit my Catholic High School and enrolled in the non-Catholic school–St. Cloud Technical High. It wasn’t long before I found out I didn’t fit in there either. I soon began hanging out with other misfits. Finally, I had enough and quit school after my tenth grade year. I had gone from having many friends in Pequot Lakes, down to just a few really good ones. Unfortunately, these friends did think money mattered and they did see nationality or race. However, they had very little of the first and a whole lot of the second.

It wasn’t long before I found myself married and divorced with four children to support and only a high school education, obtained through the GED program. I did love anything related to criminal justice and read everything I could get my hands on. A decade went by before I could afford, with help of federal grants, to go to college at St. Cloud State University. It was here my life was to change forever. I had four children and had one on the way. I married a U.S. Marine just back from Vietnam and swore I would never live in poverty again. I was going to get a college education and work for the government.

I was inspired by a sociology professor at St. Cloud State and eventually landed in Salt Lake City, Utah. I enrolled in the University of Utah and stayed there until I received my Master’s of Science degree in Political Science. I studied everything I could get my hands on in Criminal Justice studies. I did an internship at the Salt Lake City Police Department, under a federally supported program in the Crime Analysis Unit. I entered statistics into the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report and helped set up a grid to determine where and what types of crimes where being committed in the city, in order to staff those areas with more police officers. I soon became familiar with international crime and international law and organizations. Before long, I was working on my doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in its prestigious political science department.

Another divorce occurred and I found myself alone and homeless in Tacoma, Washington. Oddly enough I was still a misfit. With the lack of money and time, I had dropped out of my doctoral program and came to Washington to be with my mother during her declining years before her death. I found myself homeless a time or two. I was bound and determined to eventually get back to the university, finish my doctorate and teach. I no longer had any wish to work for the American government. Having tried my hand at working as a correctional officer for the state of Washington, I soon realized my degrees were not respected. The only thing that seemed to matter was I was poor and working at whatever job I could find.

When I found the eLearning program and met Norma Whitacre, she seemed convinced I would never get to teach in the area of Criminal Justice. I was, very,  determined to prove her wrong and find a way to get the tools I needed to teach the subject that interested me and burned to be shared. So far Bellevue College has given me the opportunity to create curriculum for a course on campus. Every quarter, I struggle to keep finding an open door and the funds to keep going. The federal government is still paying for my classes and I am moving forward with each passing school year. One person is responsible for these funds. She works for King County and Worksource in Renton. She is one of the most dedicated people I know.

I have come a long way from the days when you could leave your doors unlocked and that quiet sleepy resort town of Pequot Lakes, now population 1936. There have been key people all along the way that have guided me and helped me get my education and use it. In the end the people who have helped me are my instructors and professors, the Catholic clergy (key members) and my friends that have listened to me in my down times and helped pick me up. The federal government and its programs for those without funds has been key to my ability to afford college and my university studies. The newest addition to this list is my mentor Robin Jeffers and Charlene Freyberg, who has unfailingly offered to help me achieve my goals  (honorable mentioned to Michael Reese).  I will always be eternally grateful that people like this exist and I was lucky enough to find them!.

The week began with the Easter celebration all around us. We decided to take a trip to see the daffodils in Mt Vernon. They were brilliant. Unfortunately our week was not going to stay as wonderful as it began.

Monday morning I found out my oldest sister’s son, my nephew, had suddenly passed early that morning. He was finally completely retired and had just begun enjoying life. A few years back, he had retired after 25 years working at the Pierce County Jail. He retired as a Lieutenant. He had served in the Coast Guard, at Northwest Detention Center and with HCI Inc. as a government contractor after he retired from the jail. Then after coming back from a trip to Mexico, he died very quickly and unexpectedly of double pneumonia. His funeral was a sad affair this past Saturday. It was very hard on his mother and wife. Actually, it was hard on the whole family.

We both had a lot in common.We had both gone through the state Correctional Officer training program and had been certified. He was certified long before I was. On the day of my graduation, he was a the Criminal Justice Center in Burien. I was happy to see him that day. I had decided to work in the state prison system, at McNeil Island.. He worked for the county at the jail and had been for several years at the time. His sister spent a few years working in community corrections. The three of us had a connection to law enforcement. However, my experience was not something I wanted to continue. I was more interested in teaching. I found corrections depressing, to say the least. I had hoped when I retired, I could teach part time. Now I am doing just that…working on teaching online.

I have been reading everything I can get my hands on while waiting for the new text book I will be working with. I have spent hours trying to learn how to use Instructure Canvas. In the meantime, I am getting my band together to put on a gig in May. Just as I was setting up a practice, my bass player suffered a major heart attack last week at the age of 56. It has been a bit hard to concentrate. I could use a bit more living and a little less dying.

I have been working on getting an teaching assistant  internship set up for fall. At the same time our money problems have begun to take over. April 21th is the last day of unemployment for me and my husband will be laid off on the 27th of April. My job at the college while helpful just doesn’t pay the bills. Unemployment for my husband will not cover our bills either. I wonder how this will impact my abilities to concentrate and get the course up online. It should be an interesting project. My nerves are on edge. I don’t seem to be able to sleep very well. The deaths of my nephew and good friend and bass player weights heavy on my mind these days.

I know things will get better . It seems it is always darkest before the dawn. When one least expects it after the storm, the sun comes out, a rainbow forms and the fresh air spreads the fragrance of the flowers bursting forth in the spring. Life just cannot be contained. There is a season for all things.

I have decided to take an independent study and create a whole new Introduction to Criminal Justice course in Instructure Canvas, the new learning management system at Bellevue College. I have encountered several problems. Since I began the study, I found out they may make a standard application that every instructor will have to use in the Canvas system. Every course would be like the last course and every instructor would be required to use the college’s set up.

The program chair of the Criminal Justice department is using a new book this fall quarter and I will have to re-design the syllabus I created. I had the new edition of the text-book used in Spring quarter. That edition will not be used in the fall. Hopefully the new text will get to me before most of the quarter is over. A lot of new text-books are being requested and it can delay delivery dates. I use the syllabus as a guide for designing the course. I need to decide the most important big idea I want the students to take with them five years after they have forgotten much of what they have learned. That big idea is stated in the course objectives and outcomes.

The next stage is deciding what tools I want to use to get the information from the text into the student’s memory storage area. It seems that a lot of what people believe about the criminal justice system is myth and doesn’t match the reality of how it was established and how it really works in today’s world. In my mind, if a case should go to the courts, the prosecutor and the attorney for the defense play out a scenario once seen in the middle ages. It is like two knights fighting for the winning spot (in the press). No one is mortally wounded today in the battle; but lives are changed forever and occasionally the defendant is put to death by the state. Needless to say the stakes in this battle, even in the 21st century, are extremely high. The system is a bit archaic and it is all we have to work with in the present.

The whole process begins when society create laws to regulate behavior. It is an ever-changing process.There are many different ideas about how law is created and what concepts or theories they are based on. That is not in the scope of this course. An interesting study on how laws are created and based on what theories, belongs in the study of Criminal Law. However, the students need some information on the subject and given this in the basic introductory course.

Once these concepts are reviewed, we move to the study of the men and women we trust with the task of arresting and investigation violations. Because they belong to an organization that has its own set of goals and objectives that often clash with the goals and objectives of the courts and correction organizations, we can study and research their successes and failures and how they fit into the criminal justice system. Law enforcement is often very different from the federal level, state to state and so on. One of the most important aspects of this study is the morality and ethics of the people assigned to protect us from criminal behavior and the goals and objectives of the organizations they belong to.

Actually the fact that what we call a criminal justice system can function in the first place is amazing. Even more amazing is that we call it a criminal justice system.  Many of our constitutional rights have been replaced with plea bargaining. Once in court, should things progress to that point, choosing the jury becomes a game of high stakes. Often jury selection appears to be just another high stakes… game. We find ourselves asking the question, which jurists can we pick to support our position or which person will deadlock the process when it comes to a decision? There are many more questions like this as we continue the study.

America’s attempts to rehabilitate people who have found their way into the system seem to be handicapped by the legacies of the past. Maybe it would have been easier to just tie the defendant to a pole and dunk them in ice-cold rivers. If they were guilty they would drowned and if not… What we do today, is lock them up them together and hope they will somehow come out better people. In the most severe cases we kill them. That way society doesn’t have to pay the tens of thousands of dollars it takes to warehouse them in our prisons. In the end, do we really know what is causing this behavior and if we did could we fix it?

Now the real thinking portion of the project begins. I must use Web 2.0 technology without the help of an on campus classroom to help students understand how it all fits together and plays out in real-time. This course may be used by Bellevue College or some form of it; if I can put the elements together in a way that is conductive to learning in an online environment. On top of this, I need to learn a system that is completely new to me. Actually, since I have already begun the process, it is like learning a foreign language.

The quarter ended quietly. Weeks of working on the internship and suddenly it is over. I did not accomplish everything I had wanted to.  So, I have spoken with my mentor Robin and we will begin an independent study to put the course I have been developing into Haiku or Instructure Canvas .I will only go for two credits Spring quarter and two during the Summer quarter to finish it. I am certain there will be a lot of work to do, even though much of it has been developed during the past six months in the internship.

I need to work on one weakness I discovered in my last interview with Michael my internship coordinator. Apparently, I do not develop my sentences enough and it often seems like I am criticizing my instructors. I was not aware I was doing this. Certainly this was not my intention. I will need to monitor myself to make certain I am not doing this when I speak with my learners online. I am somewhat critical in my overall thinking and want to see the good things that have been done; but, I want to be able to comment appropriately on those things that may need some work. The most any instructor can hope for is that the suggestion moves the learner toward improvement and not recrimination.

I believe time may be running out for me. I need to teach and must find a way to do this. I have to admit I am moving into unchartered waters. Since I do not want to teach in a classroom, most local community colleges might not want to hire an adjunct online instructor without teaching experience. I may have an obstacle in front of me, I cannot jump over or maneuver around. I suppose only time will tell. I still have to work on trying to get another teaching assistantship as an internship, where I am allowed to teach online. I know I need that experience. I am hoping by Fall quarter I have something lined up. This time I am considering something in Political Science. My major field was international relations and politics with an emphasis on national defense issues. Nevertheless I think I could teach a basic introductory course.

I will need some work on my resume, curriculum vitae and my ePortfolio. I need to have all my ducks in a row. An interview may be quite different from anything I have experienced before. I am certain I will be asked a lot of questions that I need to be ready for. Maybe, the Women’s Center at Bellevue College can help me with this part of my journey. I need to secure the funds for the internship, independent studies and with the Women’s Center. With Curt about to be laid off and my unemployment ready to expire, I really have no idea where the money will come from.

I will soon find out if chasing a dream and WOW Factor leads me to a dead-end or whether I will get the opportunities I am seeking. I know I have been chasing this dream for a while. I hope it is not a waste of the federal government’s and state’s money. They have been kind enough and generous enough to provide me with the funds I need to get the training. I know Ginney To, my contact at Worksource in Renton, has worked very hard to give me this opportunity with the federal funds allotted to her. I would hate to have to report to her that I have failed. I had thought my best shot was Bellevue College. So far, I was given an excellent opportunity to design curriculum. It is time I asked them to give me an opportunity to teach. Once I have this experience, I can seriously start putting my resumes and curriculum vitae out there. So keep your fingers crossed for me. I am hoping others ( veterans, seniors and those with disabilities) will follow in the tracks I am making. College change at the “…speed of cement” and not when we need them to. Some of this is good and some of it creates a lot of havoc for the students. I keep hearing the pleas of the younger generation about to hit the academic scene. We need to get them where they will have to go!

The Blackboard Vista site is almost complete. All updates will end on March 22st. I am still waiting for any possible revisions from Charlene. So far I have not heard from her. I know what her schedule is like; and I know she will get to it when she can. I have done what was needed on the pages and really like what I see. Once again, the true test is when the students use the site and it works for them.

Last week, I went to see Charlene regarding the set-up of the Turnitin page. She was showing me how it worked, when she made the comment that without having taught in a community college, the candidate would need a “WOW Factor.”  So how does one define what that means for department chairs in criminal justice or social science departments? I really don’t know. I just know that they would have to look at my site and ePortfoilo and say, “WOW.” I don’t think I am at the point yet.

My mom used to say, “…a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush.” Right now most of my opportunities are in the bush and not in hand. Or in other words, I have not done the teaching part yet. If I do not get the opportunity to teach at Bellevue College, I might very well need a Wow Factor to teach online anywhere else. I do not have a Ph.d nor have I spent a lifetime in criminal justice field positions or working as an investigator, intelligence officer, etc. I am not an attorney and well versed in winning criminal law cases. I have never worked for the DEA or any other similar position. My work with the FBI really doesn’t qualify me either. So what do I really have to offer a potential employer that would “WOW” them?

I am not a WOW kind of person. I entered the university system while I was the mother of 6 children and divorced. I had only finished my GED. I dropped out of school after my tenth grade year to get married. I was sixteen years old when I got married and had my first child by the time I was eighteen. I was thirty-three years old when I first went to the university to get an education. I was poor, on welfare and had six children to care for. However I had a vision. I believed if I worked and studied hard enough, I would finish my studies and would never again have to be on welfare. I hated to take the money and food stamps. Each time I had to take a hand-out…I lost a piece of myself. Getting an education was something I believed no one could ever take away from me. Once I earned my first degree I was ready for a new university and my bachelor studies. I moved from St. Cloud, Minnesota to Salt Lake City, Utah with my children, new husband and with determination as a mind-set.

By the time I earned my bachelors in Sociology, I was determined to take on the challenge of changing my major and mastering in Political Science. I worked hard to learn as much as I could during those years. Eventually I applied for my doctoral studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Even though I was turned down I moved there with my husband and family, took a sabbatical and wrote a new research paper, submitted it a year later and was accepted into the program. The first quarter of my doctoral studies I had to drive circa 160 miles round trip everyday through every kind of weather. Along with my doctoral studies I had to raise my child at home, fulfill my duties as a U.S. Army officer’s wife; and I worked in a local shelter for battered women as a volunteer. I had no time to be tired and was even more determined to get my doctorate…until my nineteen year old son committed suicide in Utah during my first fall quarter at the university. I was devastated and consequently my marriage fell apart. Saddled with student loan debt and facing a divorce I dropped out of my program, after completing my course work and living for a time in Germany researching my dissertation topic.

After fourteen years of being alone and not finding a job I really wanted to do, I longed to fulfill my dream to teach. I did not have the funds and my student loans were more of a burden than I knew what to do with. Nevertheless, I found a great man to share my life with and decided to try the new program at Bellevue College called, “eLearning for Instructors.” After the first course I was convinced this is what I wanted to do. So why am I telling anyone this story through the pages of my student posts? Is this really too personal? In my opinion, it should serve as a beacon for anyone wanting to give up or not believing something really good could come out of so much hardship and disappointment. That being said, I intend to find the “Wow Factor” a department chair wants.  But, I will accomplish this in my own way.

I have surrounded myself with books and studied on my own for most of my life. I have had to play “catch up” as far as getting educated for most of those years. I had a personal learning environment long before I knew what one was. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt what it means to be a self-directed learner. I know what it means to overcome adversity and succeed. I hope to teach others that you can be anything you want to be with hard work, determination and the help of those who truly want to give you a hand up and not a hand out. I managed to get an education and not just degrees by refusing to give up. I have never let what society thought (regarding my personal life) stand in my way. I have never let being poor,  having a handicap or being an older adult stand in my way.  I believe with all my heart we can all get where we want to be by following our vision, living our lives fully in our own way, refusing to give up and by chasing the Wow Factor!