the waiting is the hardest part

"Don't Let em Kill you babe...dont let em get to you"

Sage advice from Mr.Tom Petty that has come in handy in the last few weeks of the class. It's been interesting to see how grading and observation of students in the DL environment can be both subjective and objective given the situations. I think that the primary cause for the subjectivity in the assessment phase has been that there has been no online, real time contact with each other. In prior semesters classes that I have taken online, we've had at least 1-2 sessions in which we have used chat, voice chat, or technology like Second Life in order to have some real time interactions. While I think that some would view this as not in the core interest of DL education, I think that anytime you can have class while in your living room wearing fluffy bunny slippers, the better your education is going to turn out.



I think that this type of real time activity would be great to help us judge where people are coming from...it doesnt always come through from the written post or email as well as from real live experience.


as far as my paper goes, I'm making some progress. I've always been concerned with the political climate we have these days affecting how we learn, and with the advent of the widespread use of distance learning and web based learning it has made me crazy to think what could be posted on the web that could be used against you.

Academic Freedom, for me, is one of the pillars of defense of the democracy, and in out current age of technology we need to take steps to see that it stays that way. With a sweep of the mouse, you can find any number of things that were written either by or about academics and in some cases that has been used to level claims of terrorism or being unpatriotic. I'm not going to get into the vitriol here...but it's a serious issue that demands serious attention.

Random Topic for class or Journal Post #7

Well this week I think that I learned something that was totally unintended...the power of assumption. The negative power of assumption that is.

in many ways, the last few months have been a struggle for me to move into a place where I think I should be in many areas of my life. Like many people these days, there is a certain degree of financial stress, demands from the workplace that seem unreasonable, and a never ending pull on my time that seems to come from every direction except the one that I want at the time.

So with this seeming pull in every direction from the beast we know as stress, i fell victim to the wide eyed beast of assumption. In the last assignment, I thought that I know what was coming from the web site, and wrote the page on the basis that my audience knew what I was trying to do. For a moment there, I went away from what I knew, which was that this was an online web piece in which online learners were going to be drawn in to by the sheer draw of the subject matter.

That was was my assumption, and it really screwed up what I was trying to do, because if there is any hard and fast rule that should be followed in anything, especially education, it is that we should never think that just because we know who or what we are talking to, or about that everyone or anyone else will. We as educators must follow three rules- know thyself, know your audience, and know your audiences position as well as your own. This is the stuff of true learning- whether in the online classroom or in a physical building.

By not identifying or tailoring my assignment to a particular group, I took a step toward thinking that people would "get" my ideas just because they are there. That is a critical problem, and not only lost direction and audience, but it also lost some of the creative process that is so necessary to stimulating the critical thought that I was trying to gather in the project.

Long story short...it cost me some points, but delievered a lesson that I can use in the future. I think it's a draw at this point.

more to come....thanks for reading.