Tests

I'm doing a 3 week (free) online course called Digital Footprint. I'm not taking it seriously. I'm not in a good place with the CFS right now. I also don't want a certificate or to build on this wee course to go on to greater things.

To be honest, I'm watching the style of the presenters as much as listening to the content. They could do with some media prep, these people. There's a bit too much surreptitious reading of the script in front of them. Have they not learned to memorise? Or got one of those machines that scrolls the text - like the news people have on TV? (They have one at the Catalan university in Barcelona, as I saw in the last course I did). The camera angles are not always good: one interview let viewers see right up the interviewee's nose. Not an edifying sight, believe me. And sometimes the camera is just too close - a wee bit of distance when filming anyone over the age of 30 is a good idea. There's also one very distracting hairdo and a pair of dangly bright pink earrings someone should have said were a non-no.

I blagged my way through the assessment for week and I've just passed the end of week assessment for week 2 first time. There's a deadline (normally I don't do deadlines - see comment about CFS above) but you can do the assessment many times. The pass level is 60%. It's all multiple choice. You can't go on to the next week till you pass the assessment for the previous week.

Shamefully, I find myself playing the test game: I do all the questions I can and then go back: I read the question I don't know the answer to several times, read the question before and the one after in case they help (it's called 'reading round the question' in teacher-speak) and calculate the odds of each possible answer being right (is it sensible or logical or likely). Easy-peasy.

This is 'pretend' learning for me but it doesn't matter: I expect those who are using this course as a way 'in' to IT or university level learning will go for certification, in which case a lot more will be expected of them in the way of learning and assessment.

The most surprising thing I've learned so far about my digital footprint is that a teacher's book I wrote 15 years ago to accompany a TV series is still in print and for sale on Amazon.