Categories: teaching
Date: 23 September 2010 11:24:57
I have spent this morning battling with (and eventually starting to win) the Open University's new online forum. They have changed the VLE (Virtual Learning Environment - at least I think that's what the E stands for) from last year to one which I've used a bit but not loads and now as a tutor I am required to be much more au fait with it all. The course proper starts in just over a week.
After agonising and whingeing on the forums to the module leaders (it's been driving me nuts, even though I did have some familiarity with it before, and a couple of days ago I was ready to tear my hair out with it), I thought I'd lighten things up this morning and choose a profile picture. This wasn't an option on the previous forum, thankfully, but the new ones do have the option and we're told students like to have a picture of the people they're dealing with - which is fair enough I think! Unfortunately as I'm the photography nut here I'm usually the one behind the camera so I actually don't have very many recent pictures of me (the self-consciousness about smiling, mentioned in the post below, doesn't help either!). I thought about some of the pictures from Auntie Doris's and the Mister's wedding, but most of the ones of me involve me pulling a silly face (because of said self-consciousness), so instead I have gone for a picture I took of me on Shetland last year. I'm pulling a face on that one too, but that was due to trying to withstand a gale rather than being silly, so I just look a bit fierce - I hope I don't scare the students before they even start! I really must try and relax and get a half-decent photo of me (and also stop being so bloody vain, as if anyone is even looking anyway!).