Oct 15
pcnerd37Rants, school bias, inconsistency, Office 2003, Office 2007, OpenOffice Writer, software, University of the People, Windows XP, word processor
Hey Readers!
Another week has begun at University of the People and after a horrible last week, I was expecting this week to be better but I am not so sure that is going to happen. The work load doesn’t seem so bad this week but something that was a minor annoyance before has now turned into a major annoyance.
Why am I so annoyed? I am annoyed at the school’s lack of consistency and software bias. A couple of weeks ago, we were given an introduction to the desktop. Normally I would say this is fine despite the fact that I don’t need to know how to click the start button but what really annoyed me is that the walk-through was for Windows XP and XP only. From the discussions that have taken place among the students, there don’t seem to be too many of them on XP anymore. Some, like myself are on Windows 7, some are on Vista, a few are on a Mac and many are on Linux. A number of students, myself included, are irked that the school seems to be showing favoritism to an 8 year old, insecure operating system instead of something even halfway current not to mention the fact that many are on Linux because they can’t afford a license for Windows and are at a disadvantage because of it. So much for the school being free and open to everybody no matter their circumstance as long as they have Internet and know English.
If this was just a one time thing, I would be willing to overlook it but this week it has gotten much worse. Now, we have the problem of lack of consistency. In this week’s learning guide (our reading material for the week), we are told how to do certain tasks in Microsoft Word 2003 and OpenOffice Writer. Again, I have my current software complaint but I am also irked that Google Docs, which is what I use, is completely ignored. If that wasn’t bad enough, part of our work for the week, our discussion, requires Office 2007. Huh?! Why would you tell us how to use Word 2003 and Writer, only to make us talk about features of a completely different program and only that program? This is insane! How are those of us who use Google Docs or OpenOffice Writer supposed to participate in the discussion (which is for a grade) if we don’t have Office 2007? I have multiple copies of Office 2007, but that isn’t the point. It is not my preferred environment although I do enjoy it, but many people can’t afford to have several different word processors just because a school can’t make up its mind as to what it thinks we should be using.
Make up your mind University of the People!!! I recommend making the system where everybody can learn equally regardless of their software and stop using old software or playing guess what word processor you need next.
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Oct 13
pcnerd37blog, school boring, I hate school, lack of motivation, school, University of the People
Hey everybody!
Well, it only took about 6 weeks, but I am already burned out on school. I am not sure of the exact reason why, but I think it is a combination of several things. Between spending more hours than expected on school work (I basically have next to no free time anymore), the horrible interface we are forced to use, the lack of good English skills by many of the students and bizarre deadlines, I am getting so sick of things that It is everything I can muster just to do my homework anymore. I still greatly believe in the mission of the school but at this point, I want a break.
Like many people, I have never enjoyed school. Whether it was middle school, high school or college, I have never enjoyed school like some do. I love to learn but I don’t like being forced to learn in an educational environment. I prefer to be free to learn whatever I want in as much depth as I want and find beneficial at my own pace, not that dictated by somebody else. If I am going to retain anything that I learn, I have to be able to enjoy learning and I have never been able to do that in school. When I was going to college at Neumont University, I enjoyed it but that was largely because of the other people that I got to interact with rather than the actual learning which I struggled with. With University of the People, I fell very alone and disconnected despite the fact that it is supposed to be a school based around the idea of social networking. There is no fun in something like that and it makes it very hard to get motivated. Hopefully something will change so that I can get motivated but at this point I just want a vacation.
What do you do when you need to get motivated to work on something like school? I am open to any suggestions I can get at this point.
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Oct 06
pcnerd37school assignments, english, homework, Learning Journal, peer review, University of the People
Hey readers!
I thought I should give you guys a quick update on how things are going with my schooling at University of the People.
Things seem to be improving and others seem to be going nowhere fast. It took the school about a week after our discussion on the learning environment to acknowledge our displeasure with many aspects of it and our suggestions on how to change things. Supposedly things are in the works but other than them finally getting the forums working as they should, there is no indication that anything is happening other than the fact that they say there is.
I am liking the length of the homework assignments although the deadlines that we have to go by are very strange and I don’t think they work that well for a global school. They also don’t seem to care about the fact that nobody sees a purpose in having a learning journal and a really crappy one at that. They seem to be sticking to their misguided ideas and keep reminding us that if we don’t use it, our grade will be affected by it. They can keep saying that all they want but it wont make me care any more than I did in the first place which is not at all. I still refuse to use it. My English class seems to require us to use it for the assignment this week. I am torn between wanting to complete my assignment and hold on to my boycott of the learning journal. I am still not sure what I am going to do but I suppose I better decide soon since the assignment is due tomorrow.
Maybe I am not talking to as many foreigners on there as normal but I haven’t noticed the lack of English skills this week as much as in weeks past. That said, it seems that likely because of them, many people don’t seem to be understanding the assignments and how to do them so when I grade them, I have to really mark them down because they didn’t do what was asked. I hate doing that because they don’t understand the question but the school was very clear about knowing English when they got into the school so I can’t say I feel too bad for them when they get bad grades because they don’t understand enough English to do their assignments as required by the school.
I am also slightly annoyed at the fact that they are teaching the basics of the desktop with XP. XP is old and about to die, it should not be used as an example in a learning environment. If you are going to use Windows, use Vista or even Windows 7. There have also been a number of other people with issues with this because they use Linux instead of Windows. I agree with them that it should be taught in more than one operating environment and I fully support their desire to have some of the material compatible with their systems as I use Linux as well on occasion.
Oh, and the calendar they use is crap! They need to use Google Calender.
That is all of my thoughts for this week on my experience at University of the People. More next week.
-pcnerd37
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Oct 06
pcnerd37Geek News Daily, Geek Podcasting Network, Global Geek News Geek News Daily, Global Geek News, P2P podcast, piracy, Podcast, Technology News
Greetings everybody! It has been a while since I have talked much about my podcasting so I figured now that I have some fresh ideas, it is time to share them!
First, I want to start really pushing my podcast hosting network, the Geek Podcasting Network. I want to try to build out a high quality network of shows rather than just host my own shows and be open to other people that happen to come along. I am getting everything ready to make for a big push although I am not sure how big of a push I will give it for the next month or so because I am looking at changing web hosts and I don’t want to make matters any more difficult than they have to be.
Speaking of more podcasts, I am kicking around some more podcasting ideas for myself. I am thinking about bringing back the Geek News Daily podcast as soon as tech news picks up again so there is something worth reporting on. I am also kicking around an idea for a piracy podcast. It would cover all of the big from the week in regards to piracy, P2P, copyright law and stuff like that. After seeing how much stuff there is on that topic to cover in the Global Geek News Podcast, I think it would be a good idea to spin it off as its own podcast. Right now, I have pretty much decided that I am going to do this, I am just kicking around some ideas for names, format of the show and a few other things but hopefully I will have it up and running in the next couple of weeks. I will post more details as I have them. In the meantime, if you have any ideas for names or what you would like to see in the show, let me know!
-pcnerd37
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