I hope you join me on this journey of learning, the ups and the downs, the curses and the praises of all things that entail our, NET11: Advanced Skills in Internet Use, course.
Indeed, it has been all those things at different times! I'd anticipated learning some extra tips and tricks from this course, and generally polish my skills to become an improved (more efficient) Internet user, however I didn't anticipate that I would be exposed to so many aspects that I've never considered, or perhaps heard about before that would require so much time to grasp/learn fully. And it is this last aspect that has lead to some of the frustrations - keeping up!
I maybe spent a little extra time in the beginning reading through all the posts. This wasn't a requirement, however I'm glad that I did. I did it for two reasons. Firstly not being an internet expert, I wanted to give myself every chance to learn from the postings of others, and by reading each post that was achieved. Secondly, (and I realised this mostly afterwards), is that it's easier to keep up to date with 'conversations' offer feedback/help/comments etc when there are only a few postings to keep up to date with; whereas in the beginning I just didn't know which post to begin with and was a bit overwhelmed. Now it is feasible to keep up to date with all the new posts so I don't miss anything useful to me, and equally, I don't miss the opportunity to help someone else!
There seems to be a lot of extremely experienced people doing this unit (so much so I can only wonder why they are doing such a 'simple' unit), but they are totally welcome - the broad range of skills that people have brought to this unit has built a very helpful, informative, and probing discussion forum in webct!
Nonetheless there is also a downside, and that has been that I've felt as though I'm behind in my work/learning, when comparing myself to fellow students (some of which are quite advanced). In fact recently I was concerned about this and sought some clarification from Cynthia. The up shot being is that I'm probably just worrying too much. Her comments reminded me to take a bit more 'light-hearted' look at the process. I've included the emails below so that I can refer back to them, each time I feel I'm getting too stressed, keep things in perspective (and be reminded to breath) :)
Subject: Re: Optional Tasks..
Message no. 12 [Reply of: no. 10 ]
Author: Cynthia Verspaget
Date: Monday, January 8, 2007 12:19
Hi Andrew,
they are optional for your own purposes and therefor not graded as extra
credit :) - you can breath now :P
The blog is looking great! just remember to record all
of your task outcomes and you will be fine.
cheers
cynth :)
Subject: Re: cont...
Message no. 13 [Reply of: no. 11]
Author: Cynthia Verspaget
Date: Monday, January 8, 2007 12:21
Hi Andrew,
you are worrying too much! Optional is simply that and
when the curriculum was updated Helen recognised
that there was a lot of work around the time students
hit mod 3 (with assignments looming) so thats why
there are optional tasks should you be in the position and
have curiosity (and time!) to do them. They definitely
offer no extra credit and the benefits would be purely personal.
relax :)
cynth :)
I'm currently working my way through module 4, and adding to my assignment one. I hope to finish module 4 shortly, and then spend some committed time getting my assignment one into electronic form and ready for submission.
I hope the rest of the unit is going to be just as enjoyable (but not as frustrating) as the first! :) [breath]
No comments:
Post a Comment