An interesting weekend!

Well, it is Monday and after starting to become more comfortable with returning to study, it was a weekend tinged with frustration and mild panic when an old acquaintance paid a visit. The other subject I am studying for this session started last week, and Murphy began raising his head for the first time in my return to study. The subject is a media studies unit with Swinburne uni – Media Text and Contexts, which actually has some cross references to this subject on some levels. I was more confident starting that subject after a week of Net 11, as the initial worries of an adult who never finished high school returning to study began to fade into the background.
It’s a fully online unit the same as Net 11, however my first confusion began when looking into the referencing system that they used in course work. I was under the assumption that referencing for tertiary study would be a standard system across all universities, yet found myself to be wrong in this. In Net 11 we are required to use the APA system of referencing in our work, but at Swinburne they require us to use the Harvard system. Whilst on the whole they are very similar, there are small differences which are enough in an assignment to drastically change your mark in the final assessment. For example in one system you end the reference to a book with city then publisher, but the other ends the reference with publisher then city. If I happen to confuse the two referencing styles in my final essays for both courses, then all my references in both essays are wrong. This is a ridiculous situation to have in tertiary study from institutions that are based in the same country in my opinion, especially in this day and age of online study where a degree can be made up of units taken at multiple universities.Anyway, life is full of challenges that we must face and overcome, and in the grand scheme of things this is a relatively minor one so enough of my rant on that. Murphy hadn’t finished with me for the week though, and more fun and excitement was to follow.
Referencing issues aside, I was really enjoying the flexibility of studying on the net, and it occured to me that one of the major advantages to a mature person returning to study was the relative anonymity that online study provides. What I mean is, returning to study after many years in the workforce is daunting enough, without the thought of having to attend tutorials on campus with the majority of other students being half your age. With online study you are dealing with people on a purely intellectual level to begin with – there is no stigma to do with age, race, appearance or anything else of a visual nature as to other students you appear as words on a page to begin with. I think this would also be a benefit to those who are nervous of how their cultural background may or may not be accepted on a campus. So here I was, sitting at my desk happily immersed in my two online subjects, and planning the upload of work for both on the weekend to finish off the week. Little did I know however, that I was about to experience the major downside of online study.
You can set your timetables, do your coursework, read and edit what you are going to post and upload, and everything can seem to be cruising along nicely. But you are forgetting one small but significant detail when planning the weekend as the time to upload coursework – most technicians that work for ISP’s don’t actually work on weekends, except for new installations! Yes my fellow netizens, Murphy and Optus had been conspiring behind my back all week as they watched my confidence in online study grow, and come the hours of Saturday night/Sunday morning they decided to spring their trap. No more net for you this weekend Matt, lets see how comfortable online study is now! It’s funny that there was a time where an outage of internet access would be mildly annoying but nothing else. In fact in the early days of my internet activities it was an almost daily occurance that you lived with. But in these days of permanently on broadband access, where you are instantly online as soon as you boot up your computer, it came as quite a shock. And then to call Optus and find that a technician would happily come and sort out my misfortunes sometime around lunch on Monday, well let’s just say that I wasn’t in a comfortable space anymore, lol. Unfortunately trying to persuade the person at the Optus call centre that paying for 24 hour access I assumed you got 24 hour service as well did not bring much joy, either to me or to them by the end of the phone call.
The situation did bring home a rather important point though, especially this early in returning to study. Online units have many advantages, and you can plan your days and weeks out all you want. But in choosing online study as a method of education, you are leaving yourself at the mercies of technology, which even though it is advancing at a rapid pace each day it’s still far from infallible. Whilst working day to day on your studies, you have to keep in mind that even though the internet will always be there, and is always on – your personal link to it is not guaranteed. So my advice to all is make sure you have a backup plan in place. Have your work saved on your computer and make sure that you have alternative access to the internet such as a friend’s place, library or net cafe and a means of transferring your work there. If you don’t have a burner and blank CD to copy your work to, invest in a USB flash drive so that your study can become portable when needed. For now though it’s time to me to return to the tasks at hand .

An idea comes to mind

As I have just realised there will be times that I might be posting graphics and other higher end content on this page, I will also be running a concurrent BLOG that is text only and cross-linking both, so that those with slower connections/limited bandwidth can choose which site to visit. That way if there is a video, audio or pictorial content each person can choose whether or not they wish to view/listen to it, thereby saving time and download limits. For as those that are new to the internet may not know, everything you do, see and hear online is a download whether or not you click on a “download file” link! You’re listening to a song or viewing a filmclip online instead of downloading it to your desktop? Guess what, you’re downloading it anyway, it’s just not saving the file anywhere except your temporary internet files folder. That is how some people get surprised when they receive a bill for extra usage when they haven’t actually “downloaded” anything. So as soon as I get the other site up and running, I’ll post a link on this site and on the discussion boards

Here we go

Well, as you can see the bullet has been bitten and here is my BLOG. It’s a 13 week work in progress that shall be deleted the day the unit ends, as I hate having one. Sometimes in life though we have to do things we despise, even if just for a short time, so I will engage with it, work on it and try to improve it as the unit progresses, before finally sending it burning into internet hell where it belongs, lol.

Top 5 tips for using a BLOG!

1. Never access your BLOG whilst under the influence of drugs or alcohol as once something is posted, it’s there for all to see until you edit when sober!
2. Have a clear idea what you want your BLOG to be. Is it a diary, a contact site, an income earner or something else.
3. Check other BLOG’s to get some ideas on layout, style, etc. before you start.
4. Always remember that anyone of any age could be reading your BLOG, and keep that in mind when posting.
5. Depending on what you are using your BLOG for, check your site’s access and weblisting settings and adjust according to who you want to see your site.