Summary Week 5

I've enjoyed working on my mid-term report. It has benefited me so much. I can understand and empathise with my husband when he comes home just exhausted from a day's work in the corporate office. The stress he feels when he has to deal with both Japanese and foreign clients. How he anguishes over how to smooth things out in order to make business happen. This was one of the most rewarding personal projects that I've worked on.

Clarice 2/8/08 Tokyo

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Summary for Week 5

I'm in Hawaii right now and it's great to be able to log onto Bb and continue where I left off. Though my parents can't understand why I have to sit at home on the computer so much. I tried to explain to them that I use my computer in a lot of different ways to help me complete my assignments for the courses that I'm enrolled in. It's just easier to go to church with them and sit for coffee and log-on to Bb when they're too tired to drag me along (I feel like a 7-year-old again).

While in Japan I have travelled to many different Asian countries and I've read so much about the efforts being made in Asia with eLearning. When I came back to Hawaii yesterday, after talking with my family and friends, I am hearing about the problems local people are having right here in my own state. The "houseless" (not homeless anymore) problem, mult-cultural issues in the classroom, neighbor island access to educational opportunities, etc. We have many unresolved problems in our own backyard.

Is online open learning an option for Hawaii's poor? How can you convernt skills and knowledge learned in the online open environemnt and turn them into recognized course credits that community colleges will recognize? Who would fund an open online course moduels...state agencies?

It seems that academic institutions have guidelines they need to maintain for accreditation purposes which still seems to be one of the major stumbling blocks in providing learning options for the poor. Maybe you could create online modules that a communty college could censor if they choose too and approve hours of learning and covert them into credit hours.

Clarice