How frustrating! I just lost a long post when I tried to save it and continue editing.

I have benefited from the EVO sessions although I have turned into a lurker these last couple of weeks. I enjoyed the PowerPoint session because I not only learned a few new things to do with PowerPoint, but I also felt challenged to rethink how I use this tool. Turning the lights down low in a classroom can be an invitation to anything but paying attention, yet the ideas I got from the session have made my classes more interactive and lively.

The Openwebpublishing session provides lots of new applications to explore, and I tried out several. But I haven’t figured out how to use them in class. For me, the most promising is podcasting. But implementing it so that students can use it successfully still challenges my thinking. I share some of the reservations that Nancy expressed in her post,rethinking podcasting. Success requires planning and anticipation, but that is difficult without having had some of the experiences myself. I have tried out and used Audacity including using it to record NPR news stories for listening activities, splicing phrases from some famous speeches, copying some listening activities from a cassette. But I haven’t figured out yet how to integrate into my instructional repertoire so my students can benefit from it and use it for advancing their learning.

keeping on

The student blogs have come along well this semester although I have one student who has yet to blog.  He isn’t resisting; he does not yet have a computer and doesn’t want to use one on campus, even the ones in our lab.  One student asked me if I was going to suggest corrections for their writing.  I told her no because in the past when I did so, some people got discouraged, and besides she probably didn’t want me telling the world about her grammar errors.  She understood that part.  I have made grammar suggestions in the past, but I think it was not a good idea no matter how much students said they appreciated it.  This time I am going to suggest that they come to the lab or my office if they want to discuss grammar and editing in their blogs. 

I am posting through the Performancing add on for FireFox that Bee told us about to see how it works.  I had tried Microsoft’s Live Writer, but it didn’t get along well with Blogger.  I would write the blog posting in Writer then cut and paste it into Blogger.  This meant that the formatting never transferred. 

The class I introduced to Quizlet did poorly on their first vocabulary test, but they also did not add any words to Quizlet.  Tomorrow I am going to suggest they use the tool more seriously.  I don’t want to put all the words and definitions in myself, nor do I want to organize them for the task.  I will just give them a few tugs and hope they make use of it.  Two problems arose in using it for the first test: I didn’t find the program until a week before the test, and when I put it in WebCT, I did not have it open a new page.  When it opened it WebCT, the students could not login.  I fixed the second problem, but I couldn’t do much about the first one. 

Tomorrow I am digital video taping my communication class’s group norm violations project.  I have been learning how to do it because I can give them copies of their presentations that they can review.  I want to move to having them do self-evaluations though I don’t think I will get that done this semester as I now have administrative duties.

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Not the best day

My first attempt to blog from Flock.

Right before I had to teach today, for about 4 and half hours in a row, the frame holding one lens of my glasses broke.  Spent most of the next hours with a mild headache, nausea, and did much squinting at the Power Points and Internet sites I was using. 

One student missed class and sent me a classmail in WebCT apologizing and went on to say, but she had blogged!  Hard to stay upset about that. 

I was reading a couple of blogs and the messages on the groups about privacy and the blogs.  To give a little context.  When I brought up my desire to try blogs, my colleague expressed concern about privacy issues and about some inflamatory opinions in some faculty and student blogs concerning some school issues.  My students are college age and above, and many seem to have some reluctance about sharing much of themselves in class and only a little more in their blogs though each semester there is a little more comfort with it.  

I had given the privacy issues some thought since I have begun having the students blog, but the issues brought up certainly challenge me to rethink what I have been doing.  I warn the students that anyone can read their blogs, but I have yet to need to warn anyone about what they are publishing.  Still, reflecting on the issues brought up regarding privacy, I think I should work out for myself a better sense of the limits and issues so I can introduce them more intelligently with my students.  . 

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