Golly, I feel like a real student today!
Not because I sneaked up early to read an article for my studies, and have managed to cram in an hour or so's studying with one eye on the bedroom door of my torpidly slumbering teenager, the other on the clock so I get onto cooking Sunday lunch in good time and a third eye on the Student Forums in case any new students are posting and I can chat with them (All new parents develop this useful body part shortly after maternity/paternity leave expires )
Today's exercise in the Study Calendar involved posting on OpenStudio. My own students can have a go at this if they want, but I have eschewed it til now because
- There is no time/payment allocated for it in my contract, and I am working overtime as it is;
- It looks like a clunky Instagram, I couldn't see why the students couldn't use Instagram instead.
However it is a compulsory part of my own module so I must get on with it. (I can see really that it's helpful to have a dedicated and protected web space in which we can explore doing this stuff, rather than being let loose in the wonderful world of Instagram. Anyway, my daughter has forbiden me to join Instagram and said she won't Friend me on it if I do - makes me wonder ...)
Another reason I don't like OpenStudio, is that as soon as you open it you see a sad face and it says you have 0% participation. Well, like - I just got here! Give me a chance! I can't participate, anyway, because in a bid to get ahead before my own students start handing in assignments I need to mark for them, I have raced ahead on my own module and nobody else has posted anything on OpenStudio I can participate in. So! Yah boo
Honestly, I just felt like shutting it down and going away again as I wasn't sure where to post my material or what to call it, whether I was allowed to create a new 'set' or what.
However, I suddenly remembered - I am a student I am not the all-knowing Tutor who is supposed to know everything about life, the university and everything (42, in case you were wondering - Adams, 1979). I can get it all wrong, post material by mistake in the completely wrong box, and my all-knowing Tutor will go in and put it right. She will probably even send me a soothing message saying "Great work, good to see you getting on with things in good time, by the way - you shouldn't put your work in that box, you should put it in this one."
And I will have learnt how to do it properly. After all, that's what being a student is - learning stuff. As I often say to my own students, the post-postgraduate module ZZ999 I am Already Perfect has not been written yet.
PS, I let my daughter go on Instagram without my supervision because adult friends of mine are Friends or Followers or whatever of hers on there, and I will hear about it almost before it happens if she is getting into any trouble on there.
Reference:
Adams, D. (1979). The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Pan Books.