Monthly Archives: October 2012

Assessment – check!

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I discovered something on the weekend. It could be something wonderful, or it could be something terrible; I haven’t quite decided yet:

if I connect to my iPhone’s hotspot using Bluetooth instead of wi-fi, my off-grid internet connectivity is quite reliable.

canoe heading onto a lake.

p.s. I really do need birdwatching and canoeing!

Up until now, I’ve been using off-grid time as largely offline time because of the unreliability of my internet connection. So when I was off grid, I would spend my time reading and annotating course readings (which I downloaded in advance into the wonderful Notability app). I could sometimes get onto the course Vista site and read the discussion posts made by my classmates, but I couldn’t rely on being able to post a response. And the Moodle site? No way; too big of a risk that I might change a setting and then have the whole thing freeze up. So, I would make sure I had my assignments finished by Friday, and then head to my off-grid locale. But this weekend, I was able to log onto the course site, review and make discussion posts, and view and modify my Moodle site, all thanks to a consistent internet connection.

On the plus side, this means that I can use my off-grid time to complete all kinds of course work, essentially giving me two more days per week to review the fine details of course assignments!

On the negative side, this means that more of my off-grid time will likely be used to work on obsess over fine details of course assignments.

[sigh]

Oh well – who needs birdwatching and canoeing anyway?

Kathy

Proposal – check!

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So in keeping with my crazy off-grid life, I’ve posted my LMS site proposal three days early. It’s a total departure from what I thought I was going to propose; I was planning to propose an LMS site to support faculty members in the development of their teaching skills, but when I realized the assignment requirements included specific course components, I decided that I didn’t have the curriculum to build from. I’ve never taught teaching skills, so I decided that learning to use Moodle would provide enough of a challenge, and went with something I know fairly well: English as a second language. The end result is a proposed course that I’m excited to start building. Have a look and let me know what you think.

I think I need a long weekend, but not before I prepare my first post via the WordPress app on my iPad. This will help me figure out which tasks I can actually do when I’m “offline” – can I do a blog post using the app? We’ll see what happens when I click post, and how the formatting turns out. I’ll also try to make a comment to see if it works. Even if this post works, I’ll probably still be too nervous to try to complete & submit a graded assignment from “the back 40,” but maybe I’ll be one step closer.

Fingers crossed,
Kathy