Teaching Online Blog is a Good Read for Online Instructors

I found this great blog, Teaching Online. This week's post asks for student excuses. Like I don't have any of those stories. I'm pressed for time, so I posted a recent blog link: End-of-the-Semester Excuse-Maker Strikes Again. If you haven't had a chance to read it, check it out. And check out Teaching Online.

As for this week's Highs and Lows:

Highs

1. My first online class at College 2 launched on Monday. I got just enough students to be paid the full three-credit hours, and 10 out of 13 students have checked in. Not bad for the end of day 2.
2. College 3 just scheduled me for two additional classes starting at the end of June. I'm able to afford a babysitter for the two monkeys for 2 days a week so I can get all my work done and enjoy the other 3 days during the week with them. The alternative: stressing all week and being a Nap Nazi, i.e. making sure we're home by 12:30 to put Miss Chattyshoes down so I can work.
3. College 1 online class is at its halfway point. So far, no major problems, which I'm thankful for since last term was such a nightmare.

Lows

Absolutely none. I'm having a great teaching week.

Might As Well Face It: I'm Addicted to Podcasting

I was supposed to launch my first online class at College 2 on the Tuesday after Memorial Day, but it was cancelled because no students registered. Every other online section filled, so I was incredibly disappointed. Even the day, I waited anxiously for the registration love all the while wondering if any of the following reasons kept me from filling up:

1. The college changed my 8-week, June 8 start to a 5-week start with six days notice, so not only is my class not published in the catalog, it wasn't available for all that long.


2. Students had to pay for the class as soon as they register, so I was left wondering if some would register at the last minute for financial reasons.


3. The link in the School Online section for my class was developed by another instructor, so my teaching-style was not reflected in a place where students go to make decisions.

Nonetheless, I worked like a crazy woman to get the class ready on the off chance that it would be a go. I only needed five students, but it wasn't meant to be.

I'm pretty proud of the class. It's organized, intuitive, and since I had to re-create an 8-week curriculum into 5-weeks, I decided to use my own assignments rather than the ready-made course I was given.

During all the training I've received to get started at this college (College 1 isn't as advanced in it's Blackboard capabilities, so I'm learning a lot), I discovered Podcasting.

The first thing I did was download free software for recording and sound edting at Audacity. It was a quick and easy process.

Then I just hit record and started talking. For some of my podcasts (I recorded five) I wrote scripts so there wouldn't be long pauses as I reviewed my lessons. For others, like the ones where I simply tell the students what they're going to be working on in the current unit, I just talked.

They take an eternity to upload onto Blackboard, but since I record and upload on my laptop, I can move over to my desktop to continue to work.

Now I also blog at The Adventures of Mr. Busypants, and with all these newly acquired podcasting capabilities, I decided to have a little fun. When Mr. Busypants came home from school, I pulled up all my blogposts that had his artwork and interviewed him about it. Some of his artwork included books he wrote that I scanned in, so I had him narrate.

He totally got into it, and like his mother, he couldn't stop podcasting.

Now we both have our mark on the world of podcasting. Every time I play one of his, he grins from ear to ear and listens to himself intently.

Say It Forward - Meet Beth L. Gainer

Say It Forward, hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom, is a new weekly carnival at 5 Minutes for Mom.com where bloggers feature their loyal commenters!

I can't say enough about my blogger buddy Beth Gainer. She's my #1 fan. She dutifully comments on both The Writer in Me and my main blog, The Adventures of Mr. Busypants. She's the one who got me blogging again, so it's totally appropriate (and an honor) to name her as my first loyal commenter.

She writes about medical advocacy at Calling the Shots. My all-time favorite post of hers is A Train Car Named Quagmire, which is a narrative about her advocating for herself on her cell phone while the entire train listened in. I cried, and considering the amount of crazy/meds I'm on, that's quite a feat.

She also edits a blog written by her cat, Hemi, called Hemi'sphere. It's hilarious--and I'm totally not a cat person, nor did I ever think I'd ever enjoy such a blog.

Beth is a breast cancer survivor and advocate, teaches writing and literature full time at a Chicago-area college, and is in the process of adopting a little girl from China.

Check her out!

I Quess I'll Have to Repeated the Course

Notes from students I dared to fail:

Miss Quess: "I was wonder was my grade that i receive was correct for last semester. This was the only class that its showing didnt pass to get my diploma."

Me: "Your grade is accurate."

Miss Quess: "Ok i quess i got to repeated the course in order to graduate."

Me: "Yes, you got to repeted the course in order to graduate. But I quess there are colleges out there that will give you a diploma in spite of your atrocious spelling."

**********

Email with commentary in italics

Hello how are you doing? Not so great. I'm being cyber-stalked by students scrambling for a passing grade that they spent ten weeks not earning.

I have a really quick question regarding my last quarter and my grade. Make it quick. I'm feeling impatient.

I know that I hardly tunred in any work due to the fact that I was not able to log in for the first 4-5 weeks and that caused me to fall behind. This is true. You hardly TUNRED any work in, but your Internet problems are not mine, especially since you didn't communicate them to me earlier.

So my question to you is, would it be possible for me to turn in my missing assigments and my grade to change at this point. Are you kidding me? No, due to the fact that I don't want to dedicate any more of my time to you now that we're after the fact.

This class is the only class that I would need to graduate, and if possible I would like to be finished instead of attending another 10 weeks of school. If only you'd thought of that 10 weeks ago.

So if you can let me know if it is too late I would gladly appreciate it. Thank you. Enjoy summer school.

Margo, over at Writer Mom at Home, has tagged me in a meme. Here are the rules:

1. Mention who tagged you.

2. List six unimportant things that make you happy.

3. Tag six more blogs, then go and comment on their blogs. Let them know that they have been challenged, and invite them to play along.

My six favorite things . . .

• Spending the day alone. Even if it's just to do laundry, clean the house, and catch up on work stuff while intermittenly surfing the Internet, of course, having the freedom to hang out and get things done uninterrupted is time I have always cherished--even before kids.
  
• Vacation. I love to travel and have been blessed to be able to do so often. We take the kids to Disney every November, which I love. I've enjoyed a Cruise to Alaska, two trips to Hawaii (Oahu, The Big Island, and Maui), and my first major trip after getting married was to Paris and Madrid.
  
• Walking in the rain or on the beach: I love hot rain falling down on me in the summer, especially while wearing shorts and a windbreaker and walking barefoot through the grass. Walking along the coast on a beach with barefeet and the wind blowing through my hair is pretty excellent as well.
  
• A weekend at Lake Point Towers in Chicago. Hanging out with Scott and the kids across the street from Navy Pier is so much fun. We've planned this several times around the autism walk, borrowing a condo owned by my husband's boss. Gotta love that!
  
• Sleeping in a freezing cold room under enormous blankets. Need I say more?
  
• Going through my mom and grandmother's things. It reminds me of my childhood and the things I held close from those times.
  

There you have it. I am going to ask the following blogs to list their own favorite things.

Beth at Calling the Shots and Hemi'Sphere

Alicia at Welcome to my Planet

Jill at Scary Mommy

Alisha at Confessions of a Moody Mommy

Susan, author of the hilarious memoir Angry Conversations with God at Gray Matter

If I’ve tagged you, please come back and comment.

Bookended by Bull--it

The spring semester just ended and I'm already starting summer courses. Friday ends one term and the next begins Monday. The result is in the same week I get the "I'm not happy with my grade" whining and the "I missed the mandatory orientation but please let me in your class" requests.

As a result, my terms are bookeneded with bull--it.

On the one hand, there's Miss GPA, who coincidentally missed the orientation but ended up staying in the class anyway. She's a prime example of why I try to stick with the college's policy of enrollment being contingent on attending an orientation. The students at this college simply can't handle it otherwise.

Here's an email I received today from one of my students from last term:

I saw that I got a B as my final grade. A great majority of my assignments are A's and A+'s, except for week 2 when I lost access to Blackboard. I really need an A to keep my honors for graduation and I am hoping you would consider my request to adjust my final grade to an A. I already spoke with my advisor, Ms. T regarding this issue and was told to ask you first. Thank you so much.

Huh? This is so insulting to me. I would have loved to have graduated with honors, but I didn't earn 'em so I didn't get 'em. I reflect fondly on the hardest grade I ever earned: a C in Economics, which I studied for day and night one semester when I was at ISU. I am convinced that the C the instructor gave me was a gift because I'd been in his office for help on a weekly basis. So someone please tell me why I could give a rip about a student's GPA. She missed a test for crying out loud.

And now for the excuse of all excuses as to why Speedy Student missed this term's orientation.

I was suppose to be in class on Saturday but on Thursday I had a problem with the local police in which they informed me that my license was suspended and if I was seen driving in the suburb I would be going to jail. On Friday I went to the DMV and found out I needed to pay a fine which I did and my license would be valid on Monday so out of fear I didn't come to the meeting. Is there some way I can meet with you to receive the information that I need to start the class.

I conclude with this: PRICELESS. What more can I say?

Is Self-Tweeting Selfish Tweeting? One Blogger's Twitter Journey

By TwitterButtons.com

I'm a newbie on Twitter and so far, I'm undecided. It's a great way to network with people in your fields of interest but it's also a great way to network with an overwhelming amount of useless information.

I got started when I found a list (somewhere in my Reader) of Tweeters in Christian publishing: publishers, editors, authors, bloggers, and literary agents. It seemed like a great way to start connecting with those in the field, so I started an account.

My first week went great. I followed a handful of people, and they were all in related niches; it was manageable. I'd tweet comments of encouragement and see occasional tweets back.

But then I started seeing some of the same faces over and over again, sometimes with seven or eight Tweets in a row to share useless information and spam-like URLs, one after another and of various kinds. I quickly grew to loathe seeing tweets from certain people because I didn't care if they were going to bed or that their poop was green today.

I was on Twitter overload.

I took a break (after about seven days) and decided to only Twit (or is it Tweet) when I posted a blog. After all, the masses needed to be supplied with a link to my site (note the opportunity for a link) because my posts are hilarious and contain useful information and fun artwork.

Of course, I soon realized that self-tweeting can be selfish tweeting. So now what did I do?

1. I write about the Adventures of Mr. Busypants, my 6 year old with autism and I’d like to publish a collection of quirky, funny essays that celebrates in a if-ya-don’t-laugh-you’ll-cry kind of way the busy antics of my son. I use Twitter to find websites of people that have similar interests to mine (i.e. autism, publishing, Christians, teachers, writers) and make good candidates for effective networking.
   
   
2. I'm slowing the pace. I can't develop connections with everybody, so it's easy to feel like a twUtter failure. For now, I've designated one day a week (maybe two) to spend an hour connecting with 10 or more people I'm following by visiting their websites and commenting or by direct messaging them from Twitter.
   
   
3. I don't follow someone without first checking out their website. If I like their site enough, I'll subscribe to it in Google Reader so updates are sent to one central location. So if I'm only following someone on Twitter, it's to bookmark them for future reference and occasional communication. If I subscribe to someone through Reader, there's a more authentic connection being made, and I'm not merely pretending to follow this person on Twitter.
   
   
4. I make an effort to post comments on sites that I read to establish a connection. If the site's material doesn't resonate with me after a while or if that author doesn't reciprocate and they're not interesting enough for a one-sided relationship, I simply unsubscribe so my Reader stays manageable.
   
   
5. As far as those "I just ate a cookie" and "oh, now, I just ate another one" people who clog my Twitter page with their smiling faces and useless information, I stop following. That's just TIM! Life is too short and nap time is only so long.
   
   
6. I also don't follow everyone who follows me. If I'm not interested in a follower's niche, I would rather use my time to develop connections with those with shared interest. It's not personal. It's Twitterness.

Related Links:
Tweetiquette - Are you behaving yourself?
How to be a better tweeter
Twitter Etiquette: A Guide to Being Unfollowed by Scary Mommy.

By TwitterButtons.com