I'm happy to report that I'm back online after a break of approximately three weeks. On the 7th of April, 2011, I moved to Japan. From now on, from there, I hope to continue offering learning support part-time. This is just a short report to let people know where I'm at. I suggest that you subscribe to this blog if that might be useful to you. Otherwise I'll catch you from time to time with a global email.
Just like most of the students (and staff) I've come into contact with, online learning (and teaching) is new for most of us. There aren't many so-called experts. Most of us are finding our way. Well, my aim is to evolve this online Learning Centre project into something that everyone finds useful. And by the end of that journey we'll find that we've all arrived.
In the meantime, baby steps are the order of the day. Just as a baby doesn't get to walk without occasionally falling down, I've already made a blunder or two. The first was not to obtain an adaptor that converts Japan's 110 Volts into the 230 Volts required by the laptop that Otago Polytechnic set me up with. Another was to assume that arranging an Internet connection overseas would be all plain sailing.
I'll close for now after a few observations. Yesterday, when I got back online, I went wild with emails, Facebook, catching up on the blogs that I follow, and just generally surfing and following my nose. It brought home to me the fact that online study is not so easy. It is hard to keep focused and disciplined. It's important to have your tasks that you want to accomplish firmly before you. And you need to have a strategy in place to save your sanity when things don't go instantly the way that you want them to. It is all too easy to squander your reserves of mental energy on interesting but time-consuming activity that isn't study-related. But I'm sure that you know that already. As far as that goes, I'm the newbie.
Just like most of the students (and staff) I've come into contact with, online learning (and teaching) is new for most of us. There aren't many so-called experts. Most of us are finding our way. Well, my aim is to evolve this online Learning Centre project into something that everyone finds useful. And by the end of that journey we'll find that we've all arrived.
In the meantime, baby steps are the order of the day. Just as a baby doesn't get to walk without occasionally falling down, I've already made a blunder or two. The first was not to obtain an adaptor that converts Japan's 110 Volts into the 230 Volts required by the laptop that Otago Polytechnic set me up with. Another was to assume that arranging an Internet connection overseas would be all plain sailing. The short story is that someone is going to send me what I need from NZ (the only transformers on sale here are those that convert overseas electrical current into something that Japanese tourists need when they head out of the country). In the meantime, I get to use my sister-in-law's old computer. We did manage to get the family home set up as a--what is it?--a wii, wiki, quickie, quick-ease, hi-fi . . . no, wireless environment. It's just that the text has a tendency to do a 'lost in translation manoeuvre into Japanese, just when I need to understand what I'm doing the most (e.g. access Google help).
I'll close for now after a few observations. Yesterday, when I got back online, I went wild with emails, Facebook, catching up on the blogs that I follow, and just generally surfing and following my nose. It brought home to me the fact that online study is not so easy. It is hard to keep focused and disciplined. It's important to have your tasks that you want to accomplish firmly before you. And you need to have a strategy in place to save your sanity when things don't go instantly the way that you want them to. It is all too easy to squander your reserves of mental energy on interesting but time-consuming activity that isn't study-related. But I'm sure that you know that already. As far as that goes, I'm the newbie. 
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