The last week or two has been hell...gastric flu then laryngitis...I never get ill but this floored me. My boss was great and gave me an extension on my marking...even offered to send it out to another marker but that didn't seem fair on my students plus I like to follow their journey through the course. So today is the first time I've had a chance to see where I am with H800....way behind by the looks of things!!!!!
Now up to week 6 and that means TMA 01. So need to sort out my plan....luckily I'd looked at the TMA a while back and has decided on which activities to focus on. Still have to go through forum discussions...it's although a lengthy TMA.
One good thing this week....I passed H810!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was convinced the ECA would need resubmitting after the hand in drama but it passed with a fairly respectable mark! I now have a Post Grad Diploma so feel pretty smug!
Okay I understand this is a new course and there are likely to be one or two gremlins but does the entire course website have to crash the day before TMA01 submission??!!
I'm sure there will be many who will think I should have got my finger out and finished the assignment by now to avoid such things happening......point taken but this is how I work. I leave completing TMA's till near the submission date so I can make use of the adrenaline pumping through the blood. However today the adrenaline is turning on me and I feel a peptic ulcer starting!! When I did H808 the ECA needed to be sent electronically alongside the eportfolio with all my evidence tucked up inside it.......the eportfolio system crashed the week of submission almost resulting in me needing resuscitation!!
So back to the dilemma in hand......I can't access the course materials for the course on accessibility (I joke you not!!) and I also can't access tutor group discussion forums....both of which I could do with in order to finish the TMA. I've managed to access the blogs (yippee!!), I've sent a message to Simon, I've sent out an SOS to the computer team and I've posted a distress message to the MAODE site as these are all I can access. My plan to finish and submit my TMA today has now been abandoned and at 22.38 hours I now give up and will try again in the morning!
After desperately trying to catch up all I seem to have achieved is is a big fat nothing.......I can't catch up to the others who are too far ahead. So I've made the decision to not try! Instead I'm going to start the TMA and work backwards. This is a strategy that one of the other tutors proposed on her site and it seems it may work for me!
For Week 3 I have read Seale re legislation. And I agree with Seale that the legislation for most country's is confusing and open to misinterpretation. Having been on the receiving end of it in the past I am sceptical in its ability to be fair to all concerned but I need to get past this so it doesn't affect how I provide support for students with impairment.
With regard to disability awareness training I have received none both in my last workplace and in he past 21 months that I have worked for the OU. However I intend to ask my line manager if there is any training in the near future that I can participate in.
As for the TMA I have no students with disabilities that I'm aware of and past experiences are limited, so I'm looking at it from the OU's point of view e.g what they provide etc etc. Definitely focusing on online learning. My students don't actually have to be online but they will next year with the implementation of a VLE so I may attempt to address future challenges but as my tutor has stated.. I need to explain quite clearly that I'm projecting to a future situation and that I also manage to demonstrate a grasp of a wide range of the potential issues.....now I just have to fathom out what they are!!! The critical evaluation should be ok if its based on course materials.
So that's the plan for now.....
