A Fair(y) Use Tale

Of course we all know about the interesting things on YouTube, but this particular 10-minute video is useful for teaching about copyright and fair use. And I don't just mean teaching my students about these things, either.

Working from Home

I have to say that working from home (working at home? via home? in home? What is the appropriate preposition?) is not my favorite thing. I'm getting used to a MacBook - the keyboard is odd, too flat or something. Because I don't yet feel comfy working with the wordprocessing interface, I still need to take student work to my desktop for editing/comments/grading. Then I upload their work using the laptop after downloading their work to a flash drive (just a tiny thing), uploading to my desktop, downloading again, and finally uploading graded work to the "Dropbox" for our course. I can leave a message for them when I return their work, but I've learned that my message should not be anything related to the evaluation of their work: students who drop the course are erased from the website, and any comments I've made to them are erased, too. So I keep copies of all work and send a "Here's your latest assignment" message when I return their graded work.

All these tricks I've learned the hard way by teaching online (or should I say "teaching" online: I just don't think of it as teaching in the way I'm used to teaching - too thin!).

Time Warp

That's what an online course is: I sink into a time warp! I'm sitting in my office, and I've been responding to students in four ways for the past two hours:

1. Student stops by for a face-to-face chat about his portfolio from last semester. He had said he'd be here on Thursday, so I'm not ready for him, and he'll come back tomorrow.
2. Students (about 3) find the "Page" function on our course website and page me while I'm reading student discussion postings. I return the page - sort of "instant messaging" them.
3. Students send email messages to ask for clarification, greet me, and answer my questions. I write back to all seven of them.
4. Students post messages to the discussion board for the first two topics in technical writing. Since the first topic is introducing themselves, I respond to every posting (20). Since the second topic asks them to speculate about why summarizing is the first assignment, I respond in general by sending one message to the whole group.

And it's only the third day of the semester.

Whew.

New Semester

But I'm not really finished with the old one! Grades aren't due until tomorrow, though . . . .

Today was the first day of Summer Session 1, and I've got two courses: online technical writing and intro to glbt studies. Both were active today - again I am energized by energetic students!

I won an award

At least according to my math colleague who's three doors down from me. She walked by the office today when I had my door open and commented, "You win the award for the office that's even worse than mine!" That's right - I have piles of student papers and portfolios on every surface (table, floor). But the end is in sight!

Finals Week

This finals week should be busy - as they all are. But I've just read partial final exams from my WGST 1071 class: those students have learned something this semester! I'm proud of their work. I hope that this glimpse is the beginning of good things to come from all of my students.

That Panicky Feeling

I wonder how many students realize that instructors feel the same end-of-the-semester panic as they feel - okay, maybe not the same, but similar.

The final reading-through of student work enables me to see who's taken advice, who's not able to do so (for a variety of reasons), who's needing to take the course again. With writing, because it's a skill, taking the course a couple of times gets students up to where they need to be.

I am plowing through my files, looking at final re-writes, grading revisions, recording scores, calculating attendance, getting reading to do some calculations. Actually, I don't like calculating their final grade until the end of the semester because I don't want to interact with a student in a way that says "Oh, this student isn't ever going to get more than a X grade, so why bother with substantive comments?" I think that ALL of my students deserve to be taught, even those who won't pass my class this semester. They've all paid their tuition, so they all deserve my engaged attention. It's too easy for me to write-off the slackers if I know that they're flunking anyway - that seems unfair to me. So I refrain from doing any math until the end of the semester. But I still feel panicked and pressured about it!

Late Night Peepers

My Comp 1 class has just ended - 9:57 p.m. It's supposed to go until 9:50 p.m., but with workshop tonight, the last few questioners hung in there. One of the joys of a late night in the office: dark outside and the frogs chirping-peeping-singing outside my window. Even though it's not open. Even though I'm on the third floor and quite a ways from the pond to the south of campus.

Those spring persistences: hardworking students and chirping frogs.