PRO 1 — CON 2

Tuesday morning was reserved for Information Technology. We had four hours of class yet only three credits were offered upon completion. The content we learned could easily be covered in a two-hour session. Most assignments took ten minutes to complete. I tried to use my time wisely by preparing for other classes, usually my Chinese lesson. The systems didn't allow me to type in Pinyin so one of my classmates taught me how to use ㄅㄆㄇㄈ along with the tones on a keyboard. Very useful.

It was hard to decide if this class was a PRO or a CON. It weighs at the midpoint but I decided to go against having a balance on these PRO/CON rants. I chose PRO as I did learn some useful things that will come in handy not to mention I like the professor. His teaching style is a bit unusual but it made the class entertaining. I chuckled on more than a few occasions.

The classroom was like a freezer. Signs hang on the A/Cs requesting that they not be switched off. Although Taiwan is considered to be warm year round, it can get cold. One day, the temperature dropped to nine degrees and I swear the machines were spitting out ice. The teacher obeyed the signs and refused to turn them off. The students, however, rebelled. Off was not an option so we turned it to the least offensive setting we could find.

Our first lesson involved learning about what a desktop is and what icons are. And then about hardware and software. The professor would give us a link to different Wikipedia pages and then we'd have to submit assignments based on our understanding. This was all done via Moodle. If the homework wasn't submitted in a somewhat timely manner, he'd disconnect our systems from the real world.

His favorite question during the semester seemed to be, "Are you with me?" I'm afraid most students were not. The majority were quite busy with life on Facebook and MSN.

We continued on to study the basics of Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Next semester we study with the same teacher who will be teaching us Multimedia Applications. I hope it proves to be more a bit challenging the second time around. Staying at MCU is desirable but I am currently looking for some SERIOUS motivation.