07.06.04

Poor Mikey has the flu! He’s feeling little better today but was real miserable over the weekend.
There is a natural remedy that my aunt told us about once (she’s one of those natural medicine type people). Something about eating a spoonful of crushed garlic and honey. Mike tried it a few times when he was sick with a bad cough during our honeymoon. It seemed like it helped a little, but he had garlic sweating from his pores for a looooong time.

I will be taking two classes this summer, although not at the same time. The first one, which I started last week, is title Information and Knowledge Society and is an online class using a course management system known as Blackboard (widely used by universities nowadays). I’m much more excited about my second class in August which is in conjuction with a trip to New Mexico. I’m not completely sure what the topic is but I believe it has something to do with Special Libraries, i.e. Native America Libraries. All I know is that I’m gettin’ outa’ town for a week.

Information and Knowledge Society is proving to be a very challenging course, not only because of it’s format but also because of the rather deep and philosophically oriented readings we are assigned each week. Although I find them stimulating, it is also incredibly straining for someone who has always had difficulty understanding the more philosophical side of things. We have also had a few technical difficulties. Originally, our class was supposed to be a virtual online course. We were meant to use an onine chat system to discuss topics and I think we were also supposed to be able to listen to our professor’s lecture online. However, come class time last week, the virtual chat was down and our class attempted to proceed using the discussion forum. Well, you can imagine what a disaster that was. With 50 people in a class, there was just too many ideas being exchanged at once. Within 30 minutes we had altogether posted over 200 messages to the discussion board and there was no way we could all keep up with each thread. So, our professor canceled class until he could figure out a better system. It doesn’t look like the virtual chat will be in working order anytime soon so as of now, we are still going to use the discussion forum, but we will be assigned to groups and the group leader will lead the discussion for that group rather than having everyone discussing everything at the same time. Honestly, after emailing some of my group members, we’re still not exactly sure how this is going to work. In addition, unfortunately our professor had a family emergency over the weekend and will probably not be able to make it to class this week so we will be left to try and hold the class ourselves. From what I can tell, we’re all responsible graduates in this class so I still think it will be worth while. The whole thing is just a bit awkward, especially considering the trouble I’m already having digesting the assigned readings.