Frustration

I am sitting at my table surrounded by books about HTML, blogging, web sites, etc. I have a pile of CD's sitting there waiting to be downloaded into iTunes to try yet again to make a podcast with music. I have Camtasia and Expression Web sitting on my hard drive waiting to be made into a movie. And I find myself experiencing an overwhelming sense of being sucked into a pit of quicksand.

I'm not used to "not getting it" in classes. Usually classwork comes fairly easily and in most of my classes so far, the 'product' has been a paper or a Power Point presentation, both of which I can whip out fairly quickly.

This class reminds me of my first chemistry class in high school. I kept struggling with trying to understand the concepts and feeling totally lost. My teacher told me one day that I needed to give up on trying to understand chemistry at this level - I just needed to memorize the formulas, do the work and at some point, if I kept taking chemistry classes, there would come a moment when it would start to make sense. Unfortunately, there aren't really formulas to memorize in this class and to make the computer do what I want it to do, I do need a certain understanding of what I need to do to make it do whatever I'm working on. I don't have years to take classes until I finally understand, I need to make a movie by next week and a website by the end of class and I'm about 4 podcasts behind.

I came to the conclusion today that I need a tutor. Someone who I can pay to show me - hands on- how to do all of these tasks and who can show me over and over until it starts to make sense. Tomorrow (Monday) I will start my quest for this person. I have no idea if PSU has a place where students look for jobs but if so, I will start there. My son suggested a website called meetup.com where people with common interests can hook up on line and if they feel comfortable doing so, they meet in the real world. So wish me luck in my quest. I may pass this class, I may not but I want to try everything I can before giving up.

My trip to Aaron's office

Trip to Aarons office

My trip to Aaron's office

My Trip to Aaron's Office

Aaron's help

I met with Aaron on Thursday and he walked me through podcasting slowly and patiently. I am very excited to believe that I now understand how to put together and post a podcast. We'll see since I'll be downloading some CD's and recording the audio and music in just a short while. I have the next three days off to work on this class: podcasting and HTML. Getting my website for my training project up and running seems overwhelming and may well end up with me asking Aaron for more of his time.

The funny thing about all of this is that I spent most of last quarter in two classes where I focused my attention on access for students. I work in a prison where access to most educational opportunities are non existent. In program I work, we are preparing a group of 50+ women to return to their communities in the hopes of their learning of skills to not return to prison. About 30 of these women will be early release or AIP (Alternative Incarceration Program -I'm not sure if that's what P stand for but it's something like that). We have to be as sure as possible that these women in AIP are ready to return to society in some cases 2 or 3 years before they would normally release. Few of these women will have the money to return to a college program (and that's assuming they were able to earn their GED while in prison) Without a college education, most of these women will be stuck with a job without a living wage, without insurance or other benefits and without a future. Indiscussing access, I kept coming back to on-line programs for college and even GED/Adult Basic Education.

With this in mind, I have decided that what I'd like to pursue is the ability to create and manage these types of classes and training opportunities as a profession. I have no idea if I'll be able to learn what I need to learn to make this happen. I'm certainly behind the curve computer wise. Luckily, during the course of my studies at PSU, I've met some phenomenal faculty who I truly believe will be able to guide me in the right direction. Including honestly telling me if at some point they realize that computer work is not ever going to be my forte. So, we'll see. Maybe someday you or someone you know will be taking an on-line course and see that it was developed by me. You can say you knew me when ; )

Podcast 3

Podcast 3

Podcast 2

Second Podcast

test podcast

My Podcast