Monday, April 4, 2011

Well, waking up was a rude awakening! I went downstairs and worked on my computer most of the day. I emailed everyone I knew or could find with a deployment in Uganda with the hopes of visiting their locations. Got lots of correspondence back, but all but two are way too far to visit. I have a possible appointment with Amagezi Gemaanyi and we just cannot find the address of Kampala Primary School. Those that wanted XOs asked if I could help them. Maybe... Larry wanted me to show a group of students at the guest house how online education is conducted. I said OK because, after all, that is my job in the US. However, none of my existing courses would make sense to them. He wanted to find a way for other professors who frequent the guest house to teach in various Ugandan places to continue their teaching online after they left Uganda. I knew I could not use my college's Blackboard System for other professors, so luckily, I knew that Blackboard allows 5 free courses per individual at coursesites.com. I spent most of the day setting up a beginner course for the students that would be coming on Tuesday evening. We also arranged appointments for later in the week and I spent an hour with my colleague Brenda using Adobe Connect Pro to practice a synchronous classroom experience. I wanted to see if it would be possible to do live sessions from NY to Uganda. Her microphone never worked but she could hear me loud and clear. For some miraculous reason, the Internet worked at a nice pace despite the rain. Had a really hard time falling asleep so emailed and texted into the wee hours of the morning. That jet lag!