Closed Daycare

One of the unique things about working from home is being available to be home, work, and watch over the kids when the daycare is closed or one of them are sick. While in theory this sounds like a great idea, in application it becomes much more difficult. Small children, which I have two of, require attention on a regular basis. My children are accustomed to attention by both parents, all of the time. The challenge to me is communicating to a 3 1/2 year and an 18 month old that dad does care about them- but he must be at the computer most of the day for his job; and when the phone rings it is not Mommy, but dad's work friends that really do not have a need to talk about Elmo.

What is fortunate about my telecommuting situation is I normally have long stretches where no one calls or I am simply writing a query or report- things that I can at do or at least think about while changing diapers or fetching juice.


The biggest downside, to me, is resorting to the TV nanny for the majority of the day. Thankfully, my boys like the commercial-free PBS kid’s channel- I can convince myself they are learning something in-between the occasional fighting over toys and dad's attention. We are all learning

Welcome

Welcome to my EDHE 683-50 Internship blog. This site will be used as my internship journal- cataloging my intern experience with text, images, and the occasional video post. Each journal entry will be "labeled" to tie the entry to one or more of the five learning objectives for my experience.

The learning objectives of my internship will be (Learning Objective label in parentheses):

- Evaluate the impact of distance working on the professional behavior of an individual (Behavior),

- Assess the social, cultural, and economic impact of telecommuting on the community college (Impact),

- Evaluate the overall feasibility of telecommuting in higher education for both short and long-term employment, differentiating faculty and staff (Feasibility),

- Create and expand on uses of technology in a distance working environment to improve working relationships, productivity, and office processes (Technology), and

- Assess the impact telecommuting has on managing subordinates (Management).