Web-love

Why oh why did I think it would be a good idea to sign up for an OU course that involved spreadsheets and creating my own Website??? I have made no secret of the fact that I am not to be combined with most post-war technology yet I persist. I believe my new moblie phone may be to blame. To refresh, I bought a phone called an HTC HD2 which was recommended to me by a friend's husband. He then sold his a week after I bought it, citing the complexity of the phone and the many functions which he would never use as reasons for flogging it on (thus using the remaining 18 months of his contract on the old phone he had been so desperate to replace in the first place). I on the other hand, was able to use the phone most successfully for many of it's recommended uses, and even The Grumpster was calling me names like 'nerdy geek-face'. I think a false sense of communication confidence had overtaken me.

So I needed another 60 points to complete my degree, and signed up for a course called The Environmental Web'. The 'web' part is nothing to do with spiders, more to be associated with the world-wide variety, but Hey! No problem for moi-I own an HTC HD2 and I can take photos on it and upload them to my Facebook page almost instantly. Modern technology has caught up with me, I have joined the communication generation. Computers-schmuters, IT will no longer stand in my way, I can now do anything.

Except anything required of me on my course.

In just under two months, I need to send via the computer (rather than post or even hand delivery at midnight as in the former years of my degree) typed answers to questions on a word document, a spreadsheet of something, and 6 graphs done on spreadsheets. Yes 6! Zipped?  How on earth am I going to manage that??? Before that, I need to participate in an online Tutor-group forum and I tried my bloody hardest and I could NOT log in to the said forum so my contribution is going to be pretty poor. I tried to join all the clever people who had gone in on the course forum to say a little bit about themselves and ended up putting my two-penneth in the middle of someone called Lisa's offering. I can only hope to do something similarly stupid on the tutor-monitored, mark-grabbing forum, just as someone's adding something really profound and claim it as my own. But only if I can work out how to log in.

The course website is something to be feared. In the centre, highlighted in blue, dominating the page is a section which I am going to refer to as my Mother. The course planner. Every chapter, paragraph and activity is listed, week-by-week with a little check box next to each to show your progress. Or not. And because I am such an old lady I don't know whether it is something my Tutor can access to see if I am working hard. I can hardly tell him 'Well I am working so bloody hard at the computer stuff I haven't read the environment bits' Instead I am going to check them off, convincingly, bit-by-bit to look genuine, and then nod knowingly at the day school in March as all the brainboxes and whizzkids discuss the issues associated with the course.

I am also doing my Maths GCSE. We use paper for that. The tutor uses an interactive whiteboard to show us how to do hard sums and we copy the method onto paper. Maths used to be my nemesis, it is fast becoming my friend. I should soon be able to calculate what percentage of my OU course I have been unable to do and express it as a fraction or a decimal. But I won't be able to put it on my course forum....

I must go now as The Grumpster and I are going to watch TV. I will leave him in charge of the remote control.
Lucy.