Today is Sunday, and on the ship, it is business as usual.  There is no weekend on board as far as classes and the computer lab while we are at sea.  Class days are divided into A days and B days.  About half of the students attend a given class on the A days and the other half attend the same lecture on the B days. Weekends are not recognized.    When we are in port, all classes and services like the computer lab and library are not staffed.  This type of schedule works well for this environment but it seems to be difficult for both the Profs and students.  For instance, classes were started the day after we left Halifax and continued for the7 days we sailed to Spain.  Then classes were suspended for 5 days while we were in port in Spain, and because is only take a day to go from Spain to Morocco, the classes did not resume for another 6 days while we were docked in Casablanca.  It was like starting school for 7 days and then having an 11 day spring vacation.

It has been an interesting working in the computer lab and a bit different than I had imagined.  Not sure just what I had envisioned, but I was off the mark.  The ship has a satellite connected internet and an intranet.  Students can send email and access class notes from shared drives via the intranet.  When they want to get at their home email or access things like YouTube then have to attach to the internet.  Each environment has different userids and passwords.  There is a wireless network throughout the ship, but because the cabins are all metal, wireless connection from there is spotty, and that’s being kind.  The printers in the computer lab are networked and work about half of the time.

 Probably the biggest challenge is the variety of computer equipment and operating systems that came aboard with the students and the paying passengers call lifelong learners. About have of the students have Macs ranging from brand new to about 5 years old.  The other half have PC computers in about the same age.  Most of these computers have the original operating system still running on them.  On the PC side that give us XP, Vista and Windows 7 along with Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 to contend with.  The same is true for the Macs.  We also see iPads, iPhones, Blackberries and a variety other cell phones all trying to connect to the internet.  The students for the most part are pretty self-sufficient and generally computer savvy.   This is not true for the faculty and the lifelong learners most of which are over the age of 50.  All in all we are continually busy in the computer lab working and reworking connection and printer problems and occasionally helping people scan documents and set up PowerPoint presentation.  I was told this was going to be a “cake walk” job – NOT, but the experience both on and off the ship is great.