In the first week after Christmas, my true love gave to me...

This week I started school again! Sometimes I wonder if the end is really in sight...and it is, but sometimes it seems far off. I am really excited about my classes. One of my classes this semester is an evaluation class, and we will be pursuing different studies in evaluation. The other class is very exciting to me. It is an introduction into Open Learning. It has to do with a movement by universities to open their classes up to the world so individuals can have access to knowledge. I am writing about it on another blog if you are interested. I'll be blogging about the history, legal issues, the production issues, and sustainability...I think. I'll blog about it at http://iptitsallaboutlearning.blogspot.com. Every week I'll be posting at least one thing about it. I wasn't sure if I should take it or not, but I attended the first day and I loved it! As I prepared for this week, I almost felt giddy inside as I learned more about the movement and the goodness associated with opening up education to be accessed by the world. I just think it is a brilliant plan. To provide education to everyone. Then I am working on a project at the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) where we are designing a university gradebook that will be really awesome if we can actually come up with something valuable. I started working with my team this week and we began some of the initial brainstorming and designing. We are hoping that by the end of the month, we will have some samples to take out to get feedback from professors in different departments so we can make it actually usable. It is fun to create something that hopefully will be meaningful for others. I am really happy to be back at the CTL. It is such a fun place to work!

Thank you!

Thank you to everyone for the phone calls and emails and everything for the birthday! It was a special day and I did enjoy it. It was good to talk to everyone. I hope everyone has a good week! I love you all!

Mesita

It was so nice to be home with everyone this Christmas and New Years. It was good to visit and to catch up. Thank you all for making it a nice Christmas and for making it fun. I was so glad to be able to be with family and to enjoy our time together.

Tomorrow is the beginning of another semester. I can't believe it. The last one went so fast.

Today I got a new calling as a Ward Language Missionary assigned to the Spanish ward, so I was thinking about how it is similar to having a calling to go to Mesita. I was thinking about the days of going over to the old Rock Church and to have to fire up the heater so we didn't freeze to death. Or how about when we made the wrinkled apple head people that the mice got into. And what about the "weee" road - going over all of the bumps and laughing. Those were good days of lots of fun. I'm so glad we had the Mesita experience because it was a good one for our family.