Month: January 2022

The art of studying

I started my first course today at the UoPeople: Learning Theory and Implications for Instruction.

So I read the syllabus, learning guide for the unit, reading and discussion assignments details…

It felt a lot… and these are all for this one week…

I definitely need a plan…

So I decided to make a plan, a good plan! well, I was ready, I had already downloaded a study plan from the UoPeople’s community site. I was well informed the fact that a good planning is the key to successfully complete the learning week!

The study plan that was shared within the students’ community!

It is so amazing, how people are giving!! This study plan helped me to have a clear learning week vision ! I felt so grateful…

but I felt like, I needed to arrange things here and there… So I created this, using Evernote app. I was just going to change a few things…

I customized the study plan template for me!

but then again, I wanted more important info on the plan, so I moved onto the google sheet…

Then it became like this…

Before even coming to this point, I spent pretty substantial time to learn how to navigate myself on the online campus… how to take notes digitally, how to use an online library… and so on….

Now I have spent a good few hours trying to make a study plan TEMPLATE! (not the actual van planning yet… )

So now I finally move on to the real reading assignment… 1st page… oh it’s interesting… I should take a note… and highlight… but wait… how??

Now, we can study at the UoPeople 100% digitally. Even all the learning reading materials are from online and from open sources… Yes, that’s right… We don’t need to go anywhere, and we do not need to buy textbooks! They are all online! Sounds so great!

…but then…

As soon as I started my reading assignment, I realized there are so much more to learn how to read digitally efficiently.

To read a book we open a book and then read. To read a digital book, first we download the PDF (or a book), then upload to an app of our choice, then figure out how to highlight, take notes, etc, ete…

I first try to read it on my laptop… mmm not so great… then I tried to read on the google drive… mmm not so great…. You know what I m gonna use kindle! I know how to use that!! So I uploaded my PDFs on my laptop, then downloaded a kindle app, uploaded the PDFs to kindle, then synced my iPhone kindle so I can read on my phone now!

But I did not see my PDF reading assignments in my kindle… WHY?? I tried to figure out how to read the PDF on my kindle…

It turned out that we have to email the documents to our own KINDLE EMAIL! did you know we had kindle emails??

Please read this link to know more how to do it! https://thenextweb.com/news/how-read-non-amazon-ebooks-sync-kindle-apps

After all these hustle I found out I could not highlight my PDF on kindle…

Please believe me I could use kindle, no problem! I know how to highlight, how to look up the words in a dictionary, how to take notes within kindle!! I just did not know those are not the cases for PDF documents… for PDF, kindle could only bookmark… 😭🥺

I am so shocked… how inconvenient… Anyway… after so many hours, I went back to square 1… reading it on my laptop… but at least I finally started reading … !!!

Thinking… So… it’s like the art of studying… Something we need to sophisticate as we go along with…

I … just… do not think… I have enough time to master this art before the due day in 6 days…

UoPeople Master of Education

I am going back to school… for my master’s degree in Education!! aaaand on a scholarship!!

The above sentence includes words that I would not have imagined to apply to describe my situation… “Going back to school” for my “Master’s degree in education” on a “Scholarship” ! Oh wow…

I happened to work for a kindergarten in Japan that happened to be one of the IB world schools. This kindergarten is a little unique because it is a buddhist kindergarten that incorporate the IB philosophy.

In March 2019, I could not go back to the US because of the pandemic… and when I visited my family’s cemetery by this buddhist temple, I ran into the principle of the kindergarten. We talked for a few min. and I shared with him my situation and he shared with me his situation. His situation was that an American teacher who was supposed to come to help the kindergarten to teach English had not been able to enter Japan because of the pandemic… and he was in turmoil of looking for a substitute teacher… and … the rest is a history… yes I started teaching covering his position.

Many coincidence happened simultaneously after that and somehow I received a scholarship from the IB organization.

Voila…I am starting to work on my master’s degree this month! in about 2 weeks!!

UoPeople is a tuition free university… but we still have to pay an admission fee $60 and Assessment fee $240 per class. Total estimate cost of the M.of Education is $3,180 as of January 2022.(and for me I estimate it will take about 5 years to finish… )

Yes it is affordable for many people… but for me it felt still an enormous luxury to go back to school while I could use the money and time to survive today.

but sometimes, I cannot help but wonder… what if…

What if I had a proper education in teaching…

What is I had a master’s degree?

What if I was given a scholarship…

I feel so fortunate to be given this opportunity…

Well.. thanks to this opportunity, i do not have to wonder anymore… now, i just have to do my best…

I will update my journey as often as I could… because it feels online learning takes a lot of self discipline… I need to give myself a bit of pressure, and also would like to share my experience with like minded people and/or people in similar situation…

Thank you for reading my notes here…

I hope your 2022 will be filled with exciting challenging and rewarding experiences.

xoxo

Rika

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started