BerthaBlog

Yesterday it turned warm. I wandered into Taco Bell in a t-shirt.

“What’s it like outside?” asked the cashier, handing me my change.

Me: “It’s nice, it really warmed up.”

She: *wistful sigh*

Me: “Oh—it’s really cold and miserable, you’d hate it.”

She laughed at my feeble effort.

Directions in our assignment schedule for the online class:

“Submit the assignment file to the instructor through the assignment area in the chapter folder of the course documents section of blackboard.”

Now, given these instructions, where would you think to submit your homework files?

It seems most, if not all, of the class submitted them through that Course Documents button. We were allowed to do so by BlackBoard, and our “Grades” section reflected that those assignments were submitted.

Sunday there was an announcement that most of us had not submitted our homework. Among other things, it said (in red letters, with boldface and underlining):

Please submit your assignments in the Assignments Feature.

Please notify me if you have any problems. Be sure to review the directions for submitting assignments in both your textbook and in the proper section of the BLACKBOARD ONLINE STUDENT ORIENTATION.

That’s right, we’re being chastised for not reading directions. Apparently we were all supposed to be going through the Assignments button. At least we think we were; various classmates have e-mailed the teacher and posted to the discussion board asking for clarification, and so far haven’t gotten a response. There’s growing angst about the assignments, whether they were or were not credited, and how exactly we’re supposed to be submitting them.

Oh yeah, another thing: Under Course Documents, there are “Chapter” folders, as described in the directions. If we use that Assignments button, there are no “Chapter” folders. There are “Assignment” folders, which cover several chapters. And if you don’t submit all the assignments covered at once, guess what? You can’t submit the remainder. Several of us have discovered this the hard way, by submitting the assignments for Chapter 3 and then attempting to submit those for Chapter 4 a day or two later.

Yeah. I’m confused too.

I imagine you were quite pleased to discover my 2GB flash drive in the computer lab last night. You could have left it where it was, or even turned it in to the lost and found. But as I learned when I arrived at the lab at eight o’clock this morning, you chose instead to keep it for yourself. Because apparently you can come up with the thousands of dollars necessary for tuition and books to attend a college, but you can’t scare up twenty bucks to buy your own flash drive.

Perhaps you were hoping it would contain some confidential personal information which you could use for more ambitious larceny. If so, you were out of luck. All that was on the drive was the last four semesters’ worth of my assignments. I wonder if you even paused to speculate whether I had backups of those files. Fortunately I do, although I will not enjoy re-creating the two hours’ worth of work I had done in the lab yesterday.

You are a petty thief, and I hope my flash drive causes you nothing but grief. May it gather more viruses than a day care toddler, and infect your computer with every one of them. More realistically, I hope you try to pass off one of my old assignments as your own and get your dishonest ass expelled. You suck.

Love and kisses,
-Bertha