Meetings

I suppose it's good that I go to meetings . . . they're opportunities to share, tell stories, learn about other people's problems so that I don't feel alone with our IT shenanigans (no, that's not the right word: not negative enough - it's IT irresponsibility or arrogance or ineptness or all of the above).

The worst story I heard today was an instructor whose course -- a course teaching students how to use MS Outlook -- could not / would not have said software loaded on to the classroom machines (or the instructor computer).  The head of IT (AKA our CIO and Assistant Vice President for Technology) said that he didn't think it was "pedagogically sound" to teach Outlook skills in a hands-on lab setting.

Right.

Sure, I think it's unethical to charge our students college tuition to learn a software package, but our college has two programs that basically do just that (Office Technology and Computer Applications - these are programs left over from the "merger" when a community college and a technical school merged to form Century).

The things you learn . . .

Midterms

Here's the list so far since Sunday:

• created two exams based on student input (ENGL 90: Introduction to Writing and WGST 1071: Intro to GLBT Studies) = 6 hours
• graded ENGL 90 student portfolios (three pieces of writing, the exam, and two blog posts; wrote individual letters to each student, including their point percentage at this point in the semester) = 9 hours so far for the first 28
• scored discussion posts and quizzes for ENGL 1025: Technical Writing = 1 hour
• conducted 27 conferences in my office (had to clean up office a bit first) = 6 hours (have 10 left; 5 missed, one because she had a baby!)
• chose my courses for summer at a "blood-letting" meeting today = 1 hour
• worked half of my Writing Center shift = 1.5 hours
• met with two of my classes = 2 hours

To do before tomorrow:

• finish grading WGST 1071 exams (18 half-done)
• finish ENGL 90 portfolios (11)
• eat supper

My eyes are bleary!

Images of teachers

I missed UNESCO World Teachers' Day (Oct. 5). 

But here are a bunch of pictures of teachers around the world.