Six weeks in: where did September go?

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As I expected, things have been generally hectic so far this semester. Teaching every day means that I don't get a work-at-home-gather-my-thoughts day, so this usually falls to the weekend. I am not too behind on grading so far, but do have a virtual* pile of grading to do right now. Here are a few observations of how things have been going:
  • The online quizzes seem to be working out pretty well for GEO 121. Students have from Monday morning until Friday night to go in and take the quiz. I've already had one slip-up where I forgot to post the quiz, so I gave the students an extra day to take it (even though I only posted it two hours late!). Then there was a Blackboard outage this morning, so I extended the time even longer. I'll be sure to get my quiz for next week posted today!
  • I have still been dealing with technical problems in our lab, but I am optimistic that things will finally be settled in the next week or so. Our setup for logging into the computers was changed over the summer and some software that worked with our previous setup no longer works properly. Then they moved the location of one of our network drives- in the middle of the semester! This also had caused some issues. Everything can be worked around and some of the problems have been fixed, but it very confusing for the students- especially the ones who are not expert computer users.
  • In my hazards class, I have made more of an effort to focus on assigned readings. In previous semesters, I had an additional component to their journal assignment that took up a bit of time during one of the class meetings each week. This semester, I have been giving the students a hand-out and let them have 5-10 minutes to jot down responses and notes about the readings. We follow this with discussion of those readings. In the past, I felt like the readings were often neglected, so this allows us to devote some in-class time to them, plus the students (hopefully) feel more accountable about doing them before class.
  • This morning we had out annual Parents Weekend open house. We serve fruit, pastries, coffee and juice and talk to some of the parents of our students. Turn out varies from year to year and today's was pretty light. I did have some nice conversations with a few of the parents, though. It's usually a good experience- I think it's a nice opportunity for the students to show their parents where they take classes and share more about what they are studying.
So, I'm surviving. Swine flu is going around on campus, so I am drinking lots of orange juice and making sure to sleep as much as possible. I also have an unplanned trip next week, so things are only going to get crazier before they settle down. I have to make sure things are organized for my classes before I leave- I better get to work!

*I have most assignments turned in online, so most of my grading is sitting on my hard drive or on Blackboard.

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