The 'Sin' of inaction...

Are you afraid of failure? Me too -- at least until I had a sober introspection recently. I've always been reluctant to make a move,and follow up on an idea, simply because I feel I'm not 'perfect'/well prepared yet. "When at all would you be ready?",I asked myself during my reflection. Let me share a couple of my inaction with you.

In my senior year at the university, we took a course in Entrepreneurship. One of our mini projects was to write a business plan for any business of our choosing. My teammates and I targeted the transport sector, and decided to write a business plan for the cab (taxi) business. It included online booking and other such features. We FAILED to follow up on the plan and implement it -- we felt we were not ready yet (at least i thought so). Imagine the ambivalent feeling I had when I learnt of a similar idea being implemented in Nigeria now -- TaxiPark.

Another inaction of mine was not following up on an idea to develop a web/SMS-based results (grade) notification for students in my alma mater. This idea I got while doing my national service. I was not however surprised when mFriday came out with a similar app.

I can go on and on. The point I'm trying to make is that we should try even when we are not sure of the outcome. Face our fears. Inaction is devastating -- very devastating. No wonder the Confiteor (said during the Catholic Mass), has a line that goes thus, "..., in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, ..."

Join me this Saturday at the Methodist University campus in Accra, for the mother of all Barcamps in Ghana -- Barcamp Accra. Let's pledge to make efforts and thus fail so much that failure has no other choice than to let us be.

Register for Barcamp Accra here: http://barcampaccra12.eventbrite.com/

Augmenting classroom lessons -- on-line.

It's been three years since I started tutoring students of the CUCG Summer School (run during the long vacation). It's been an experience: ups, downs, in-betweens, but I'm always thankful for the opportunity.

Personally, I think the stress these students go through is immense and overwhelming, and often does tell on their grades. The headache for me these years has been to find a convenient way to augment the classroom lectures. The fastest answer of course, on-line classes.

Before I had this urge, e-mails were mostly used to exchange, share lecture notes, assignments.
This year however, a new approach was used (or added). We created a group on Facebook, which afforded effective communication as a number of people can chat at the same time, thus exchanging ideas and helping one another. Another group (or Circle) was created on Google+ and that took us even closer to our interaction-oriented goal. Unfortunately, we never got to do a hangout -- connectivity issues. But I saw an improvement in the class, and that makes me happy.
Google Docs also came in handy as the class got a taste of how to collaborate using the service.
There's more room for improvement. The positive influence of on-line in education cannot be over-emphasised.

I would like to hear from folks who have fused on-line technologies in their classes: experiences, ideas I can use, and more areas I can explore.