Right now I am seriously considering adding a second podcast to the lineup on this website. This would be a short (2-5 minutes) daily (on weekdays) podcast with a title something along the lines of “Samuel’s Editorials” or “Samuel’s Views” or maybe even “A few minutes of Samuel’s Views”, the latter of which would work very well as an outro “This has been a few minutes of Samuel’s Views”.
I tend to have something to say about something each day, but I tend not to get around to writing it down, and then often forget about it. This is something I could produce either “on location” with the help of my digital notetaker, or in the studio depending on where I am when the idea strikes. The subject of the day would most likely vary from something newsworthy to something of personal interest. I suppose that the bottom line here is that it would be short and to the point, and something that you could listen to on the bus or train to work…if you wanted to.
Details are still sketchy at this stage, mostly because I haven’t thought about most of them, although I think this is something I could do without taking too much time out of my already busy schedule, after all, I tend to do this in my head already.
Samuel
March 9th, 2006 at 09:57am
I had an assignment which I thought was due on Tuesday. I did a lot of work on this assignment, brought it up to and beyond my standard for finished assignments, and brought it with me to the class it was due for on Tuesday evening.
In this class it became apparent that the assignment is due next week…OK no problem, early submission is fine…but wait, the assignment is changing before my eyes, suddenly there are a bunch of new bits and pieces in it, suddenly I have to take my assignment home and rewrite th whole thing, suddenly a heap of my work, time and effort has been wasted. This is an issue, and it becomes an even more serious issue when you consider that I was up all night on the night before “submission” putting the finishing touches on this assignment, so that I wouldn’t have to do so in the afternoon after a very important meeting which would go for an unknown length of time.
Now I have to rearrange my schedule for the coming week, which is already looking busy, in order to rewrite an assignment which was changed with a week to go. It could just be me, but in my opinion all assignments should be properly defined when they are issued, they may have minor changes (eg. corrections) after that, but the entire submission format should not be changed, nor should vital aspects of the assignment.
I’ll admit that the due date error was mine and mine alone, but that doesn’t matter as nobody would mind if I handed in an assignment a week before it was due. What matters is that I spent good time, and put in a lot of effort to produce an assignment which now has to be rewritten and redesigned. I am not impressed, and my level of annoyance has not changed since Tuesday night, when this entire debacle of teaching methodology occured.
You may have noticed that I am being very bereft of specific details here, and there is a reason for that. The teachers involved know that I am not happy about this, various students also know it, however I feel that this was a mistake, I don’t think that the teachers in question set out to change the assignment with a week left. I get the distinct impression that certain details were simply absent from the original assignment sheet and the teachers didn’t notice. I therefore have no reason to “name and shame”. I have provided enough detail for you to understand the story, and for the teachers in question to know who they are. I see no point in naming the teachers, they know who they are and I don’t think it will happen again. The incident is regrettable and annoying, but these things happen, and there is minimal point in dwelling on it.
All I can say is that I am not expecting my second version of the assignment to be up to the same standard as my first version, I just don’t see how that will be possible in the abbreviated amount of time available to work on it.
Samuel
March 9th, 2006 at 06:15am