There would have been a time when teaching photography without a camera would make no sense. We can talk about theory and look at examples all we want. But at some point, being a practical skill, we need to actually shoot to start learning by doing. On the other hand, I have discovered that there…
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Blogs about work, life and everything in between.
MMS 173: Keep a photo archive
Why? This is actually something that I understood early on, but not enough to fully appreciate it until much later. My first ever digital camera was a Kodak DC3200 — my dad bought it for me when I went with him to Thailand back in 2001. It was hardly anything beyond a toy, but it…
Thoughts on Blogging as a Learning Tool in 2024
I’ve been making students write blogs as assignments ever since I started handling courses in BAMS. I’ve already seen the gamut in terms of styles and quality. I also tend to see patterns, as well as tendencies both good and bad. And I’d like to talk about these things with you in the hopes of…
Online Uni Life #14: One size doesn’t fit all
Last trimester was an opportunity to test the repeatability of what I did last year for my online classes. It didn’t require a lot of planning as I already had the structure in mind. The Moodle course site will look mostly like how it has with my previous classes. The new Discord server would also…
MMS 173 2022-2023-2T: One shot summary
The One Shot Summary is an assignment that I require in one of my courses where students choose a picture they’ve taken at any point during the trimester which they think best embodies their experiences in class. And then they write a 1,000-word essay about both the picture and their experiences. I was wondering if…
Online Uni Life #13: Looks different, but feels the same (Part 2)
Educational technology is ultimately limited by the people who use them. It’s one of the things I learned at work as an IT guy in UPOU. I anticipated the possibility that it wouldn’t matter much even if I agreed to use the platform that students would say they liked the most. Not everyone is going…
Online Uni Life #12: Looks different, but feels the same (Part 1)
My hiatus from teaching coincided with the influx of a new generation of undergraduate students at UPOU. They were among the first products of the Philippines’s recently established K-12 program. Many of them were also those who passed the University of the Philippines College Admission Test (UPCAT) who specifically chose to study online under UPOU’s…
More stories about my dad #2
Today’s my dad’s birthday. He’d have been 79 years old. I thought I’d get back to a story I left hanging a few months back. I mentioned before that we, meaning the men of the Librero family, are not particularly showy when it comes to affection towards loved ones. Me and my dad certainly were…
On talking about politics and religion
The prevailing wisdom amongst many for the past years has been to never talk about things like politics and religion with friends and relatives to avoid fights and arguments. It’s more important to keep up the good vibes. A friend’s post made me consciously realize that perhaps that is not necessarily the right thing do…
Thoughts on the looming elections
Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I’m at a point where I’m more worried about my son’s future rather than my own. Whatever the reason, I’ve never been invested in elections until now. I’ve always tried to stay wherever the middle ground was at each time. Even when I didn’t like who won the presidency, I…
More stories about my dad…
I was thinking about what story I could share about my dad, coming into the first anniversary of his passing. It came as I was sorting through old junk. But I need to preface that with another story. I don’t remember the exact date, but it was likely around 2001-2002. I post this awkward picture…
So, I got Covid…
I tested myself late on both counts. But the glaring point holds. I admit being angry and frustrated during those first 2-3 days when I was feverish. Then I figured that since this was likely to have been omicron, I might as well get it over with now. Still… while symptoms were relatively mild, recovery…
Roxie (March 31, 2012 – December 29, 2021)
(aka Racha of Jam-Polka) One more loss to cap off the year. We got Roxie right after I got married. The poor girl was about 10 weeks old, caged and on display in the veterinary supply store next to where I work — the last of her litter to not have a home. I had…
Online Student Engagement and Sense of Community in a Philippine Online University
While a relatively simple study, I feel that this is one of the more relevant things I’ve studied as an academic. I can do the flashy projects and studies, but those can only be given solid foundations by research such as this.
Online Uni Life #11: Sympathy and empathy Part 8
Knowing and experiencing It’s not that I was in denial that the struggle is real. I just didn’t go through it as badly as some. The University of the Philippines, particularly the Los Baños campus, was not a place of hardship for me. It was home. It was, and still is, my comfort zone. While…