Deadlines, deadlines...

Finished my Visual Learning assignment last night just under the due time. As usual, had a bunch of things demanding my attention, concern number 1 being the loss of my cellphone on Saturday night. Wouldn't you know it, after a long, fruitless search on Saturday night and again Sunday morning and afternoon, the dumb thing was found--of course, after I'd already been to Alltel and gone through the rigamarole of getting a new one. Grrrr....

Anyway, the assignment. Here it is in all its glory. I actually enjoyed checking out all the different templates on Inspiration but found some things a little frustrating. I think part of my prolem as well is that I'd much rather draw things like this out by hand. I'm sure one could become quite skilled and adept at quickly putting a graphic organizer together on the computer, but still prefer looking at someone's hand-drawn work. To me, the ability to draw something from memory is much more useful than fancy, computer-generated work. The luddite in me speaks out, I guess.

I must be insane

Well, I agreed this morning to take over for a teacher at the high school who will be having foot surgery and out of commission from mid-November until winter break. I will be responsible for one biology class and four anatomy/physiology classes. Bio should be no problem, but A/P is going to be a bit of a challenge since I've never taught it before. Balancing that with my three courses at Ashland is going to be a lot of work but I feel it can be done.

I have a pretty good concept put together for my Inspiration assignment, just need to put it into the computer now. Hoping to get that done tonight or by tomorrow at the latest. I will be working at Camp Nuhop this coming week so my spare time to get things done is about to get a little more precious. I was down there yesterday teaching some basic geology to fourth graders from the Columbus area. They were really good about seeing that the process of sedimentary rock formation and erosion is cyclical, and they had lots of fun exploring the cave at Malabar Farm and drinking real spring water straight from the ground at the Malabar Inn. Hopefully the sixth graders I'll have next week will be just as engaging!

return to civilization

More on last week...

I had a bit of excitement getting my newsletter assignment done on time for my Ed.Tech. class last Sunday. While I was putting together my newsletter in Word, the power went out due to the high winds that blew in from hurricane Ike. This was around 7 pm. The assignment was due by midnight and I'd just lost all my data since the file was saved to my hard drive. Fortunately my girlfriend did not lose power, but I did have to scramble quite a bit to get my stuff together and get over to her place. That only left me with a few hours to get my data reentered and then formatted. Got it done by 11:20 that night and got a good grade, but wow, talk about a close call!

Obviously this was a very frazzling experience, but even more frazzling for me was that I had to put off the assignment until Sunday in the first place. Between the two other courses I'm taking at Ashland plus my work schedule, I had other things all week demanding my attention. And it stinks because I do like learning how to use my computer to do new things or do things better. Hopefully this is not going to be a recurring theme for me this semester.

My electricity was only just turned back on this Saturday afternoon. Made things interesting this past week as I had a PowerPoint presentation to complete and present for another class on Wednesday. Reading by candelight each night was definitely an experience as well. Managed to get through it, but man, it really stinks when you have to use someone else's computer to do your work. Particularly when I'm a Mac person and everyone else I know is a PC person. All I have to say is that I will always shell out a few hundred bucks more just to get a computer that is reliable, easy to use, and comparatively bug-free. Even if that means social ostracization. Or having to eat Ramen noodles, mac and cheese, and cheap spaghetti. In short, you can have my Mac when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers!

Like some of my other classmates have noted on their blogs, I too am a little apprehensive about all the projects I'll have to put together for this course and my electronic portfolio. I am hoping to keep up with it all, but even more I'm hoping to pick up some useful tools along the way too.

Initial musings

Well, I guess I've officially joined the modern age fully, as if Facebook and MySpace weren't enough. It's been a challenge this week in getting anything computer-related done since I have not had electricity in my home since Sunday's gusty kiss from Texas. The name of my blog originates from the nickname a friend/fellow competitor bestowed upon my 29" racing mountain bike. ORB is how it's usually referred, which does stand for "off-road bus," which is a comment on the size of its wheels (not standard size, for you who do not mountain bike). I will be posting more stuff in the coming days, regarding life, cycling (lack-of, lately), and my coursework at Ashland (yes, I am a student once again!). Adieu for now...