Time to File Week Five

Time Flies...

Hard to believe another week is just about over but it's time to file week five.  Overall a very good and productive week as I'm just about finished with Module 3.   I'm really settling into a steady rhythm and while the assignments are getting a little harder, they're also getting a lot more fun and my learning is definitely expanding.  Keep reading to get the skinny this week on my learning development and to check out my statistics after week 5.

The Week in Review

Module 3 is the largest module in terms of class points for BE101 at 600 points.  It would not surprise me if I end up spending over 20 hours overall on these activities.  Since I've been running about a week ahead, I'm not going to have any problems wrapping things up, but I do recognize that if I was taking any other classes, this would have been a tough week.

While the class interaction assignment isn't due until next Wednesday, I had to plan ahead to submit that early so I could, actually, interact with my classmates.  I went ahead and submitted that on Tuesday which will give me plenty of time to comfortably work with my classmates.  I submitted it early because I wasn't sure what my schedule was going to look like.  It turned out to be a pretty normal week, but at least I can put most of this assignment behind me.

The reading assignments were knocked off pretty early along with the primary video lectures.  As I mentioned previously, I won't be able to view the next video lecture until I submit my Learning Activity #4 (LA#4).  Speaking of LA#4, it's the biggest one we've had yet and has required a lot of dedicated time.  I might actually submit this assignment later today, but I'll wait to see how I feel about it.

What Did I Learn?

Module 3 is still camped on observation which might cause you to conclude that this class is boring or moving at a snail's pace.  But that's not the case.  What I'm finding now with observation is the need to balance a higher level view of a passage against the granular details of significant terms.  To put it another way; when you focus too broadly on the forest you run the risk of losing sight of the trees.  Conversely, when you intently focus on a tree, you might never see the forest.  You need to strike a balance between the two.

This has made this learning assignment a real blast.  It's been neat to experiment with looking at a passage from both a micro and a macro level.  I don't know if I've got it yet, but I find the fact I'm able to switch between the two encouraging.  The hardest part still is resisting the urge to dive into interpreting these observations but I'm sure we'll get there soon.

Finally, I've been spending more and more time poking around Logos as I mentioned in the post Getting to Know Logos.  It's going to take a while to really get comfortable with this software, however, I'm learning a little more each day.  I found a Logos Wiki which I'm just starting to explore and I also discovered a nice Logos cheatsheet by Dr. Harry A. Hahne that has been very helpful.

Lessons Learned and Best Practices

You would think that if one assignment was dependent on another assignment that the Canvas system would prevent you from accessing the second assignment until the first one was completed.

You have to watch what you click in Canvas.  There are things that you shouldn't view until after the appropriate time and the Canvas system will not prevent you from being stupid.  So think before you click.  Otherwise, you might end up having an epic fail!  I'm glad this was not the case for me but I'm still surprised it could actually happen.

Another lesson learned and best practice I discovered this week is don't be afraid to relearn things.  I mentioned in Time to Go Wayback during the time when I was working on the first observation activities that I spent a significant amount of time relearning English grammar.  Boy, that was time well spent and I'm definitely thankful for that right now.  I'm getting very comfortable with parsing sentences and I'm not as much of a Google cripple as I was a few weeks back.  Well played Dave!

BE101 Statistics

I'm just about at the 1/3 mark of the BE101 class.  Here's how things look through 5 weeks.  It's interesting to me at this point how the assignment weights are lining up with the time investments.  Even though I'll end up spending a lot of time on Module 3, I'm very comfortable with my time commitment to date.