Catching Up!

I realize it's been almost two weeks since I've posted. That's because I have been literally snowed under with writing , proctoring and grading final exams. I teach in the legal assistant program at Conestoga College. It's the first year this program has run and you can probably imagine the work involved in preparing the curriculum. Having come from the UAE, I am so used to being able to create things at the last minute, either photocopy them myself or have them photocopied by Kasim who would bend over backwards to help you - so used to working together as a team. Here we have the most ancient photocopier that breaks down twice a week which means I had to have my exams prepared at least a week in advance to allow time for the printing department to get them ready. Even one of the photocopiers in that department was broken! I need to submit them to Disability Services prior to the exam date so they can process them for my two students who write their exams separate from the rest of my class. These students are allowed an extra 30 minutes for each hour. This is all new to me as we didn't have a disability services department in the UAE and I'm sure many of my students there could have benefitted from a department that recognizes learning disabilities. However, it worries me that in the real world, these students will have a problem as they won't be allowed that extra time to finish a rush job and I wonder how they'll cope. My three day exam was an integrated project. Students saved their files in an Exam folder each day. I wanted the folders to be locked so students could only access their files during exam times. The IT Department said it couldn't be done so I had to move the files over for 27 students each day and move them back before the next exam - very time consuming. And one day I almost wasn't prepared to begin because a student was waiting for me when I arrived at my office. She had locked her keys in her car and didn't have headphones for the machine transcription exam, or her precedents all saved on her USB. So there was an emergency to deal with and to ensure she was calmed down before the start of the exam! I was hoping that since it was an open book project, every student would do really well. Not only was it open book, but they could talk to their colleagues about it after the exam, study again before the next day, check information out on the internet, use a dictionary to look up unfamiliar words, and do whatever it takes to achieve a really good mark. Much to my surprise - it didn't happen. The students didn't use the opportunities available to them to do really well. I would love to know why. Marking the exams was very painful and that is what I was doing the week prior to Christmas. Marks had to be submitted by the 21st so at midnight on the 20th, I was trying to make the formula and submit them. Guess what - I couldn't do it. The Gradebook was not working and all I could do was send an urgent message to the Gradebook developer and admit defeat. You know what the problem was - it was so simple - I was working in Firefox and our new Gradebook only runs in IE!! I could not believe it. So Friday morning, I opened IE, checked the numbers again, and finally pressed Submit! And as for being 'snowed under' - I really was. We had a record snow storm earlier in the week which stranded me in London (an hour west from Kitchener).

In between marking, I was logging on to ANGEL which is the new learning management system we're adopting at Conestoga. I'm part of the pilot project and am anxious to play with it. More on that later - I've submitted my proposal to Peter and am hoping he'll approve my ANGEL pilot project for Assignment 2.

I spent a bit of time trying to insert the Christmas clock and the digital clock into this blog, adjusting the time zone. These learning experiences are ones I shall not forget. I didn't realize choosing the correct time zone was part of the initial process when choosing the clock, before copying the code into the blog. And then of course, I didn't exactly know which time zone I'm in - is it plus or minus! Eventually I managed to change the code without starting all over again, and I thank one of my previous USQ courses for teaching me about code.

The other awful thing that happened is that my external hard drive has crashed. The message on both computers I tried is "Corrupt and not accessible." Everything I own is on that hard drive and I'll have to find someone over the holidays to see if they can recover the data. All of my USQ coursework is on it - everything I've started to write - my marking sheets for the final exams - pictures galore - I'm very sad about this. In the words of Forrest Gump, "That's all I have to say about that."

Merry Christmas!