This is a personal note to myself so that when I look back in time, I remember that I love teaching but that I hate teaching at UB and would rather have my finger nails repeatedly extracted on re-growth than ever try it again.

I was really excited about teaching the 3D virtual communities course that I wrote about last year after visiting the Second Life crew at Siggraph. Unfortunately, Canisius could not host it because of technical difficulties with getting the mac version of the software before the beginning of the semester. That is where the idea should have died as fate demanded.

The goal of the course was to develop a virtual community within a 3D web environment. The environment itself was already created. The students, as per the syllabus, simply needed to get togther, create a social network, government, and infractsructure for their online community and document the development.

I am now convinced that moving it to UB was really the wrong direction to go in. Instead of canceling I decided to work with Jesse. Roy allowed me to get supervised teaching credit and I put several hundred hours into designing and particpating in the course. Yes, several hundred hours for a job that I was paying to have. What nonsense.

For me the undergraduate UB students seem to be really unmotivated. I am not saying this from this single experience, I am saying this after I have participated in classes with them and now I have tried teaching one. I think the average stuednts motivation level there is just much lower than the average level at the school's I attended, or at least, in the programs at the schools I attended.

The students in the course seem to have a serious lack of self-motivation, a factor which I think often defines a student's ability to learn and develop both intellectually and professionally. It's really hard for me to understand as I am extremely motivated from within and always have been. None of this, "some leader inspired me" bullshit that my student gave me this wek. I think that one can be genuinely inspired by ones self. Ask anyone that knows me.

In the case of this class, I just didn't want to direct/control the specifics. I tried to leave the option up to the students. Big mistake I guess. I think people signed up for the online course looking for a freebie. As defined in the syllabus, it was a writing intensive course and most people never handed in any of the papers.

Tempreal (the course name) failed miserably. Almost no papers were handed in, most students did not participate in the communities. Both Jesse and I called their houses, their cellphones, sent them emails, posted notifications to the course web site, etc all to no avail. At this point I am uninterested in putting more effort into the course until I see some production and homework coming in.

During the first part of the semester I tried so hard to get students going. At first many of them complained of technial problems and the inability to get online. I found it hard to belive that students would sign up for an online class with the descritption that ours had and then not be able to get online.

Some students did not arrive in the course environment until weeks after the semester started, despite notifications, etc.

I cannot believe how ill prepared these students will be in the business world if they carry such a work ethic over. I mean they will simply never make it.

God help me to never teach at a massive public school again.

I am once again staying up late to get some renders done but instead of getting the renders done I have managed to wipe out my boot partition to my linux drive. Great. This whole project has really sucked. I am a big fan of not working with untested products.

Well stickboy, I also find late in the night/early in the morning to be the best time to get work done. For me it is the only time iwthout distractions. However, I do hear what you are saying about wanting to hold onto another day that is slipping by. I feel that too.

I also went to go see goodbye Lenin last night. It was a really facinating and yet funny/touching movie.

See terry's journal [inlink]userName=terry,blogID=181[/inlink] for more info about the movie or visit here to see the trailer.



What I questioned most during the movie was WWTD? What Would Trebor Do? I thought I remembered him telling me he was a wall guard. Maybe I am wrong but if so - wow. In any case it would explain his obsession with social justice and protecting the rights of the oppressed and protesters, etc nowaday?

If that is the case I wonder if he does it out of a bad conscience?

I read your journal