How time flies!

When you set a goal, time is just a factor. When implementing your plan, time becomes a ghost. If you must win, note that time is an illusion. I believe that most times when you planning for success, you have to overcome yourself first. Don't postpone that goal for another time even when it isn't so convenient. You may not have the convenience you seek to achieve your plan throughout your lifetime.

Sorry, I am not a motivational speaker...but I have learned things I believe I could share.

This week's article will take a different approach. I won't describe how this week went in detail. I am not ready to tell a tale of woes :). Instead, I will be digressing into something else...

Remember I stated that I was working on the OYL group project last week with a group of Kibo students? In my team, there were four of us. I will be going into detail about how the project was structured and my participation in the project.

Final Group Presentation - Group Self-Directed Learning

Project's Theme

The theme of the project was...

"People learn the most by teaching others" — Peter F. Drucker

Project Description

Each group consists of 4-5 students who are to carry out self-directed learning on a topic they collectively chose. The goal is to create a learning plan on the chosen topic, implement the learning plan, and then submit a video lesson that teaches the topic to students outside of that group.

Because of the bulkiness of the project, it was divided into milestones that spanned the entire 5 weeks. There were 4 milestones for 4 weeks - weeks 2, 3, 4, and 5 - and for each week, we were expected to complete the milestone for that week.

Sincerely, some of the groups started working properly on the project and all its milestones in week 5. As expected, it was so difficult to complete all the milestones in one week. Our instructor, Keno O., was gracious enough to extend the project's deadline by a week. This means that no group has an excuse to submit mediocre work.

The Milestones

I mentioned that there were 4 milestones to be completed to call the project a success. They include:

• Milestone 1 (Planning) - The planning stage involves:

  • Determining your group members
  • Picking a topic
  • Setting specific learning goals (S.M.A.R.T)
  • Developing a learning plan that properly distributes the responsibilities across all members

• Milestone 2 (Monitoring) - This was where each group was expected to implement their learning plan and monitor progress.

• Milestone 3 (Evaluation 1) - This requires that a video lesson is created by the group to explain the topic. The cool (or scary) fact is that the output you get from milestone 2 will serve as the input for milestone 3 and would determine the quality of results a group would get for this milestone.

• Milestone 4 (Evaluation 2) - Here, you evaluate the result you get from your video lesson as a group. Each group would:

  • Evaluate the quality of their learning
  • Perform a reflection on their group learning experience

  This milestone is dependent on the quality of the video lesson.

What Each Group Must Submit

Each group was required to submit facts and proofs that established that it accomplished the goal — Self-directed learning. Submission requirements include:

• The Group Learning Plan (from Milestone 1)

• A Video Lesson on the Group Topic (from Milestone 3)

• Your Learning Self-Evaluation and Peer Evaluation (from Milestone 4)

• A Written Reflection on the Group Learning Experience (also from Milestone 4)

My Group Participation in the Project

My group chose a topic titled "Distance Learning - The New Era of Education". It was an awesome experience working with my team members on the topic.

Members of My Group

• Christopher Alade
• Adeyemo Abdul Afeez
• Aisha D.
• My Humble Self

Our Learning Plan

For our chosen topic, there was a lot to say. We, therefore, chose specific subtopics and shared them among ourselves. Each of us was expected to do proper research on the topic assigned and prepare a summary of his/her findings. This summary could be a text document or a PowerPoint/Google slide.

Our Topics Include:

• Christopher Alade - Introduction to Distance Learning - Definition and History
• Adeyemo Abdul Afeez - How to Google Effectively as a Distance Learner
• Ohachor Victor - Importance of Joining a Community to a Distance Learner
• Aisha D. - Distance Learning Platforms - Free and Paid

What about I talk about "the benefit of joining a community to a Kibo student"?

Importance of Joining a Community to a Kibo Student

I am certain that NO Kibo students can deny the fact that the Kibo community has benefitted them.

"Online education is not for the weak", I have said before.

There are a lot of new challenges you face, especially in Africa, as a distance learner at Kibo. But, the community is not one of these challenges. It helps to mitigate the loneliness that goes with learning online. It helps to reduce the stress that goes with trying to tackle a problem alone.

One of Kibo's core values is "Better Together", which shows that the online community is at the heart of your learning as a Kibo student. You get to interact with peers and grow with them. You get to tackle challenges together and improve your collaborative skills. You get to grow and learn from others. You get to share ideas and participate in activities that improve your mutual connections. You get to strengthen your network. You are no longer alone when you face challenges. You also get to help others.

Also, you get to participate in squad challenges...at least that is what got me writing... You learn to explore your interests and passion and develop yourself, and your future.

At the Kibo community, we learn continuously, and together we rise to the challenge! Think about it!

This Week's Recap

Before I leave you, I need to give you a summary of how this week went.

• We started the Web Foundations course this week which provides us with a foundation building for the web. This week, we were introduced to HTML and CSS. We also had a taste of Javascript.

  This week's project was building a CS Professor Website. Most Computer Science professors have ugly websites that remind you of the 1990s. The project required us to create a fake CS professor website using HTML and CSS and be creative about it.

• Programming 1 engaged us with how to carefully think through our program's organization to improve readability and scalability, and modularity. The project we were given this week was about simulating a microprocessor's ALU. The ALU is responsible for performing very simple operations on numbers. We were required to write a program that simulate the ALU and support some of the operations.

  I also enjoyed two practice challenges that required developing a simple Date Formatter API and calculating the total distance covered by a footballer during a match.

• This week, MT was all about review on the topics we have covered so far and working on the midterm project.

  *IN WHISPER* I am yet to work on my midterm project and there is a lot to do... cause of poor network connection throughout this week.

• This week, I experienced the worst network connection I have ever had in years. Poor network connectivity made me...

  • To miss my stolen phone badly.

  • To miss all the live classes this week and the first mentorship session I ought to have.

    I was very pissed off on Wednesday when I was unable to join any of the live classes and the mentorship session. I almost cried. I had to take a walk to relax my tensed nerve.

    That bitter feeling when you prepared for something and still couldn't get it...I experienced that feeling a lot this week.

  • Pray for the text on the image at the top of the article this week and set a goal to answer this prayer next week.

All I can say is:

Everything negative - pressure, challenges - is an opportunity for me to rise — Kobe Bryant

Thanks for reading friends. I hope you got value from this. Let me leave you with this pulled from Pinterest.