A mish-mash

I have a couple of drafts going, but nothing is solidifying tonight.

• I’ll have a letter or two ready to go out to my students tomorrow.
• I watched the Shining last night. There were a couple of things I never noticed before, but most notably the son’s Apollo mission sweater. I imagine I never noticed some things because I [still] cover my eyes most of the way through the movie!
• Do you have any recommendations for great visual project management software? Must be colorful and probably have Gantt chart capabilities. Currently exploring Smartsheet, Droptask, and Basecamp.
• Our Moodle install is currently not allowing forum posts to go to email. Based on my extensive scouring of the internet, this appears to be a common issue with Moodle 2.7. I’m curious as to whether an upgrade might fix it? I’ve so far come up empty on other solutions…
• Currently considering pursuing a masters in accounting online through the University of Alabama-Birmingham. They have a “masters bridge” program that I could complete beforehand, rather than going through a complete second bachelor’s…
• Attended the first webinar in a series called Ignis, last week. Alyson Indrunas presented on 4 mistakes she’s made in a decade of teaching online. I came away a little terrified about having given notice to the school I teach online for, but I enjoyed the presentation.
• I spend a lot of time on the beaches near where I live. This is from the dock in Wheeler, about 20 minutes north of home. It was starting to think about raining:

Note to Students

Dear Students,

We’re mid-way through the term, this week. It seems like it has been a pretty quiet term, so far. This class is self-paced. This presents inherent challenges for both of us – you need to know that if you are a little bit behind at this point, it is not the end of the world. Get caught up as soon as you can.

If you have any questions, please ask me – I can help you understand the material or work out a schedule for finishing up your work for the term. You can also get help on campus in either the Math Learning Center or the tutoring center.

Related to course completion, if you are ahead of the game, way to go! Keep going! You can finish this class early and have extra time to focus on your other classes. By the end of this week, if you are following the Module schedule provided at the start of class, you should be finishing up Module 3, covering fractions and mixed numbers.

Here are a couple of resources that might help you a bit with Module 3, if you are still working on it:

Videos from PatrickJMT:

• Adding & Subtracting Fractions
• Multiplying & Dividing Fractions
• Converting Decimals into Fractions

Purplemath:

• Fractions
• Converting between decimals, fractions & percents

In an effort to make the course more engaging, moving forward, I will be contacting each of you over the next few days and into early next week to connect and give you an update on your progress, including your grade at this point in time.

I hope that things are going well for you and that you won’t hesitate to contact me if you need anything.

Thank y0u,

Sarah