I, Curtis

Academic Madness

Today was fun, I planned to go to Gaston College to pick up my diploma from fall and to go see Mr. Biggers’ new show. I ended up doing a lot more.

First, stopped in to pick up my diploma. After looking at my ID, the kind gentleman in the registrar’s office dashed over to the diploma bucket to flip through to look for mine. He dug for a while and then asked me to spell my last name again (never a good sign). After an exhaustive dig through the diploma bucket, he asked if I had petitioned in a different semester. I’m guessing from the question that people do not often petition in the semester before they are planning to receive their degrees. After telling the kind associate registrar that the petition was filed in summer, my diploma was located, but that was not where it ended. I had to talk another associate registrar (one who specializes in degree checkout, and whose initials appear on my initial degree form) to get my degree reconfirmed, since someone majorly screwed up and tried to process my degree for the summer term, and a note of a course substitution was not made properly. Since my degree had not been checked out it was not on the transcript correctly either, therefore the previous transcript I sent to Fayetteville was useless. Also, I inquired if my AFA (Associate in Fine Arts) would become automatically active, I was told that I would have to re-declare it because when she graduated me, the declaration was lost.

Per the college’s procedure, for all students without a declared program (I had literally been undeclared for like 5 minutes), I went directly to counseling to re-add my new major. After a 15 minute wait I was seen by Alice Williams, my favorite of the Gaston College counselors (she doesn’t waste time going over information I already know). After a very short time, maybe 5 minutes, I had my new form in hand, and went to drop the form off at admissions (there is something fundamentally wrong with picking up a diploma and visiting admissions on the same day).

After clearing that issue, I went to the business office to pay for a transcript I was about to request (makes things go faster if you pay first). Went back to the registrar’s office, where there was a short wait (during the wait, I filled out the form). I turned in my form, picked up my student copy and headed out of the office.

Finally, on to the other part of what I had planned for the day. Went to the Rauch Gallery to see Mr. Biggers’ show. It was much different than most exhibits I have seen. Art of all media, everything from digital prints to woven fabric was exhibited. The most memorable pieces were a giant chess set and an engraved wooden door. I did not see a public announcement of the opening reception, so therefore, I missed it, and I thought I had missed a chance to see Mr. Biggers, but just as I was finishing my tour of the enclosed gallery space (the gallery is the space as well as the connected hallway), Mr. Biggers came around the corner and saw me. We spoke briefly. It is much more enjoyable to see him to discuss a show after the reception than try to speak to him during it.

Overall not a bad day, got my diploma and saw Mr. Biggers’ show (and Mr. Biggers).

ex. 1 WebAdvisor Programs list

ex. 2 My diploma

Full Moon

Due Dates and Deadlines

I should really learn to be more careful with how I handle due dates for things. Last night I was in a panic, trying to get my Cognitive Psychology paper done before midnight Sunday (Fed. 8th). The due date in GITI became the 8th because it was originally set for the 5th because of the self paced nature of Cognitive Psychology. In Cog, all of the assignments are due when the unit closes, in this case, I thought the unit closed on Feb 8, but it turns out that the new module opens on the 8th and the present module closes on the 12th, so I prepared my assignment about 4 days too early and was in a panic, and making plans around the assignment for no reason. I guess if I am going to deviate from my decided schedule in this course, I should probably check with the master schedule before making any new dates, oops. I worry that the problem could have gone reversed, calmly completing an assignment against an adjusted due date, only to find out that the assignment is overdue. I do not want that to happen, ever.

Instructors Are Annoying

ok, the title sounds bad, but it really is not about my instructors, its about my instructor objects. Today I have been working on moving some things around and creating a bond between the AddressBook and Education modules. I want my instructors (present and future) to be registered with the AddressBook so that I can store a lot more information about them. The problem with this comes from the process for associating an instructor to a class and the handling of old instructors.

The main issues are:

Allowing user to enter information, but avoiding duplication of instructors
Keeping Class.Instructor and the Instructor object consistent
Promote data insertion at various points in the process without overwhelming user
Keeping my sanity while tracking all possible permutations of data manipulation

I have a majority of my code written, but there is still a lot of things I need to consider to prevent data contamination.

Erikson’s 8 Stages of Ego Development

I always find it interesting to read something academically and find relevance to my own life in it. Upon reading about Erik H. Erikson’s 8 stages of ego development (or eight stages of psychosocial development) I found myself identifying areas of my own life where I had not necessarily completed some of the stages with a positive result, mostly the stages involving my parents. I do not trust easily because I never found them to be particularly trustable (stage 1 basic trust/mistrust). During the 2nd stage when I should have been developing autonomy, my parents were always telling me things I should not be doing as opposed to letting me develop normally. I suppose you might say that they were overly controlling. Stage 3 depends soley on a child’s ability to image. This did not involve my parents, so I developed quite at bit in this stage and completed it with positive result. At some point I managed to get through the 4th stage and find useful things to do as well as begin taking control of my own academics and developing intellectual interests. Self-esteem and a circle of peers is not something I developed during this phase, mostly due to parental interference. Parents should never convince children that they do not need friends because they have family.
This is where the simple answers end. In stage 5 I am supposed to establish a sense of identity. I do not quite feel as though I have completely developed one yet, which according to Erikson, is much better than developing role confusion or negative roles. I should have finished this stage already, but I can not confirm that I have.
Stage 6 I think I may have entered, but can not be certain. Stage 6 involved self disclosure and the ability to bond to another person and develop and intimate relationship. I’m pretty sure that my present relationship qualifies, and I do not feel as though I am turning towards isolation at all. I am majorly coming out of that possibility.
Stages 7 and 8 tend to be for later life, but I do see some traits of stage 7 in my life, just not to their most developed aspects. I desire to improve society and certainly have the fear of inactivity and meaninglessness. But, don’t we all?
This link is not the best resource, but it does give some insight into Erikson’s theories.
http://www.learningplaceonline.com/stages/organize/Erikson.htm

GITI: Dependant Assignments?

It has just occurred to me that something about the way I handle assignments in GITI is a little off. While the concepts for the assignments are the same as are used in regular classes or even online classes, they do not always truely reflect the work flow and other features of the student’s side of an assignment.
An example of this can be seen in the paper I am presently preparing for. I have a certain part of that assignment due on the 8th (although, I have GITI making it due tomorrow to give myself time). The assignment is to prepare an APA style title page, abstract and reference page for the paper. That is all that is due tomorrow. The problem I see is that that stuff is shoved into Assignment # 1342, even though it is technically for the completion of Assignment # 1348 (due March 24th). There is no mechanism for moving the completed stuff (the “Docs”) to the other assignment and no way to incorporate notes or anything else I add to assignment 1342 into the final paper assignment (#1348). Last semester I had a similar problem, in American History there were 3 “research projects” that led up to one final research paper. There more than here, there were useful things that I could have used in the final assignment.
This analysis brings me to two new types of assignments that I would like to add to GITI. One is “dependant” assignments that can recieve information from other assignments (maybe using GITI’s Link functionality). The other is “marker” assignments, these assignments exist to receive grades, but do not necessarily need to appear on the schedule. The “markers” are due to a discussion board assignment in one of my courses (Art History) that will almost certainly always be done at the same time as my quizes, and therefore, are redundant to appear on the schedule proper.
Another potential change is the addition of a control on the GITI Home (Summary v2) display for assignments, which would prevent the display of any assignment whos “Date Assigned” date had not passed, giving the user the ability to actually use the field for something useful, such as entering that date to be the date an assignment will be active. In online coruses this could be quiz activation dates or any variety of things like that. The idea being to bring more relevant assignments to the front and supressing assignments that can not be dealt with yet. This function may also at some point come with the ability to “surpress” an assignment, such as a test or quiz that is to be taken in person that has already been prepared for, even though it has not been finished.

The Suckage That Is ‘Doc’

GITI has many nice features, including its ability to track file names for assignments and in general be responsible for holding information about the majority of my academic work, but there are some areas where functions that are not directly part of the Education module, but that it relies on, have failed to be developed as well as the Education module components itself. Today the external dependancy that I am pissed at is the GITI ‘Doc’ module. ‘Doc’ is a simple module, always has been, with its primary functionality to be allowing the writing of lengthy documents within GITI itself. I was attempting to work on a research paper for Cognitive Psychology and found that I could not easily do a page break without having to add a new document to the assignment for each page. This is somewhat less than ideal. I also found that there is no concept of spacing for things like vertical centering because it is not something easily done in HTML (except with tables, which I suppose might be my best bet here?). I do love Doc, but sometimes its simplicity becomes a hinderance to my work flow, since I sometime have to find creative ways to do what I want to do in it. That being said… Doc is a lot less annoying that Microsoft Word for a lot of tasks. Word has this thing about pagniation that no matter what setting you put the thing on, it still recognizes that it is on a page and hints at this (if even only by little dashes across the document). GITI Doc has more of a flow and I can type most of my formatting without fighting with Word’s complicated controls for that type of thing. I don’t have to loose flow and use the mouse to do things like bold my text, or apply an underline, I just type <strong> and <u&gt where I want it to be :-).
I need to spend some time working on things that are not part of Education, I might one day leave the world of academics and have a need for some components of GITI for other things.

Memorizing a New Catalog

I just set on the task of preparing my Summer 2009 “Advising Verification Form” for Fayetteville and came to a sad realization that I do not know all of the course numbers yet. I am used to registering or planning courses at an institution and having a working knowledge of the course numbers and being able to relate them to course titles, and in some cases, recitite the course descriptions.
It has been so long since I have had to introduce myself to a new course catalog. It is really bothering me that I do not have a physical copy of the course catalog, which is usually the way I memorize course information. I am stuck flipping between tabs in FireFox to get course information.
Maybe before I get my degree I will have the catalog memorized, at least for my departments (PSYC and CS).

Google’s Limited Vision of the World

Google recently released a new “Task List” feature for their mobile customers. It is a very nice feature, better than anything I have written for GITI, but it does not easily snap into my existing application without special API coding.
My complaint with Google on this is very simple, the way in which they promote this tool in their blog post announcing it. The article is simple and direct in its task, comparing their Task List on an iPhone to paper. They make many assuptions that are simply not true, 1. you will always have signal, 2. your iPhone will have battery past lunch, 3. Everyone carries a giant phone/PDA/MP3 player/paperweight/pocket blender. These are the limiting factors including their own admission in the article that you can not fold an iPhone.
The “limitations” of paper they list can also be true of an iPhone. The limited availability of the iPhone in this case may be the battery power in short supply, or any variety of weird things that Apple decides to push to the device. Contraty to popular belief, if you leave your iPhone in one pair of pants, it does not follow you to the next pair of pants (however, you might still have access to your tasks from GMail). For difficult to organize, that applies more digitially than it does to paper. There is limited space for physical paper, so eventually you go crazy and find a shreader. In the electronic paper space, you can add things to lists and let messages and things pile up infinitely.
Paper has its advantages, including, you can easily stick a post-it note on anything, and you can add a post-it note of tasks to someone else’s desk (or coffee cup) and have them see them along with their own, otherwise, in the electronic world, you have to either hack their Google account and add it (not considered ethical in the western world) or send them an email begging them to add the tasks. Some people do not respond well to being begged to add things to a task list, but a bright canary page is a friendly request for attention.
Anyway, Nice feature Google, but next time, don’t put down the 5000 year old technology that has served society well before your creation.

A Few Updated Shots of GITI EDU

It has been a while since any new screen shots of GITI’s Education module were released, so here is a quick look at some of the newer functionality.

A new menu guides the user into a never before seen world of managing their academic life.

The same old class management page has gotten a few new features (upcoming assignments, journal), as well as the ability to control grade calculation based on a weighted or points system, which the user can set up.

And adding those classes has become more streamlined than ever, as it is now possible to insert all of the classes for a semester at one time.

Instead of a clunky list of all courses, sorted by status, pending or planned courses now stay out of the way in their own little hide out for planning a semester. From this system, the user can move courses between semesters and even make a complete four year plan if they know what courses will be available. When the time comes, the courses can updated with instructor information and even take the course registration numbers that can be used when the registration window opens. Beats a post-it.

With those numbers, GITI has a handy way to help a user see the numbers and match them up to course information. After this screen (when the user finished registering for courses), the user can input instructors, course description and other pertinent information.

After that long weight between semesters, the courses can be activated in a simple utility, presented here. This activates the courses and will soon move forward to collect more information from the user about the courses that they will find on their syllabus.

Once the courses are registered and the semester has begun, the student can visit this little utility to enter all of the predictable repetitive assignments that occur during a semester (or just enter a list of assignments, but thats boring, so its not shown here).

When all of the assignments are complete and the semester is over, it is time to close the semester. This can be done as easily as opening the semester, the student simply visits the Close Semester app and inputs the needed information. This can be done as many times as needed until all courses are finished and all grades are entered.

Finally, this whopper of a page (which will likely be getting some size controls based on # of schools entered), allows the user to control critical things about their institutions as well as add new institutions when needed. For most users this page should never become this large and unmanageable, but I suppose I personally am the exception.

This has been a tour of the new GITI Education module. Perhaps at another time we will take a closer look at some other aspects of GITI, such as anything related to its namesake module, Scheduler.