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I have 18 credit hours live and everything still seems great. Lets take a look at what this 18 hours is composed of.

ART 114
Self-paced course until February 2nd, at which time there will be a weekly unit due, this involves discussion boards and quizzes. Blackboard @ Gaston

ART 288 DH
This course meets optionally on Tuesdays and Thursdays for like half an hour or so. Most of the assignments will be given and submitted online, utilizing Flickr (just like Digital Photo @ UNC). All assignments will be photographs, including final exam. Flickr @ Gaston

BIO 155
This course is mostly reading.  It is fully online and  has stuff due about once every two weeks. Blackboard @ Gaston

CSC 253
Self-paced with a few deadlines. There is a very small  set of assignments, which makes this course very much like the first one. Blackboard @ CPCC

PSYC 310
Fully online, running on a module system with modules running about 2 weeks. Its pretty much quizzes, discussion boards, a research project and a final exam. Blackboard @ UNCFSU

PSYC 421
About the same as 310, except modules run for about 3 weeks each and assignments may be completed any time during the module. This course includes  a research paper, quizzes and discussion. Blackboard @ UNCFSU

This is what my Nikon D60 will do in the dark with very little light (one tiny outdoor bulb), while being handheld. This is ISO-1600 @ F/4.8 for 1/6 sec @ 68mm (72mm in 135 equiv). There was no flash or anything in use for this shot. Between Active D-Lighting, Active Noise Reduction and the Vibration Reduction system, this image came out very nice (and I like the warmth the grain gives to the image).

All of my instructors have images of themselves available online this semester.

ART 114 Art History 1 Mr. Richard Gilbert
	ART 288DH Studio – Digital Photography Mr. Michael K. Hensdill
BIO 155 Nutrition Mrs. Paula H. Dedmon
	CSC 253 Advanced C# Programming Mr. Alberto Botero
PSYC 310 Theories of Personality Dr. Vivian Dzokoto
	PSYC 421 Cognitive Psychology Dr. James Hogan

OK, so, everybody remember that academic schedule I sent out last week? Well… apparently my instructors are not obeying those dates.

This course, ART-114, is obviously and clearly set to start on February 2, 2009. I was refreshing my Nutrition course in Blackboard, and came across “Art History Survey 1” being active. I clicked  into the course, thinking it was just a template that was activated accidentally, or in a test mode or something, but the instructor has populated the information in the course,  including a 16 week schedule, beginning tomorrow morning. I now wonder, did the instructor misread the course manifest, or was he misinformed by his department?

Nutrition on the other hand, will not be functional until Wednesday.

For all of my college years I became familiar with the standard 10-point grading scale, 90 – 100 = A, 80-89=B, 70-79 = C, etc, but now at Fayetteville State University, I have to get adjusted to a new grading system. The FSU system is a little more difficult to get an A in. I have to be careful of each and every assignment and protect my points. The grading system is shown below:

A =    92%-100%
B =    83%-91% 
C =    73%-82%
D=     64%-72%
F=     Below 63%

and one day, it will have a friend….

Today I was thinking about my Status web page and realize that it and its underlying system sucks. This morning I just wanted to make the thing not show a status for my “Message” area and just be blank for a while until I got around to feeling motivated to do something (its the weekend, do I need a purpose?).

Now I’m looking at the page itself and realizing that I don’t like the way things are displayed. It was designed to be very crude, but its a little more crude than I want it to be. The academic block could  be so much better, like maybe contain my classes or the type of assignments I have due or something. I guess that block was designed to be vague and not give too much information to just anyone that strolled in. My server logs confirm, there isn’t that much random strolling in going on.

I am giving a lot of consideration to making the page morph into my idea for my portal site, giving statuses, blog entries, bookmarks, recent art/photos, etc in an easy to use format that adapts itself on the content level based on who is looking at it. I think the main fear stopping the portal thing is that once I build it, the individual sites will have no purpose, which in general bugs me. I am starting to think that the portal will need to be a lot more like a summary of sites than a replacement of them.

The Spring 2009 semester is just a few days old and already I have had to select a topic for a research project in Cognitive Psychology. Not having had a lot of interaction with psychology curriculum in a while, so I had difficulty selecting a topic from the list. Originally I selected “Gender differences in decision making”, but then decided it was a little boring to me. I finally ended up selecting “Perception and Artificial Intelligence”, something a little more appropriate to both my psychology and technology interests.

This should be an interesting semester.

For Chris, since he asked… this is my schedule (not just a course list).

January 8, 2009 – May 8, 2009

Fayetteville State University

January 12, 2009 – May 12, 2009

Gaston College

Central Piedmont Community College

February 2, 2009 – May 12, 2009

Gaston College