{ The Comp Blog }

I had what I thought was a pretty overwhelming list of things for people to do, but almost all of the students whizzed through their tasks. And with relavitvely few questions. I guess most feel pretty comfortable working online. One student is running into problems even just getting material saved to his disk--I hope I can keep his spirits and confidence up. Many were helping each other out and they all exchanged urls so they can start reading each others' blogs. They are much further along than I expected.

Two students who expressed doubts/concerns did not return today. I hope they find sections they are happy with. One student said out loud, "This is fun" as he entered text into his blog.

Sybil, as to sharing blogs, what I would like to do is compile a master list (5 columns) of all the blog URLs, partly so they can check each other out if they want to, but also so we have an easy place to go in order to revist blogs for our research.

Anywho, a good class in the very sweet new Library 14A. Too bad I volunteered to give it up and move over to IACC 150C.

Ok. SHOULD have blogged RIGHT after classes yesterday, but... well, Kevin can atest (sp?) to the fact that I was BEAT. Take me out back and shoot me- should have been my motto. The students were great, don't get me wrong... I would say 50-70% of both classes were in awe of the wonders of blogging. One already had one so he felt like an expert, as he should have. A few expressed 'poor' attitudes with the idea of it all.. but I think, the optimisitic side of me (which is usually wavering around 80%) thinks, that they will, too, soon be amazed. Then again, HELL, we need 'unpositive' feedback too, right? Not all students are alike. Not all people learn alike. Isn't that rule #1 of some teaching bible? Anyhoo- the reason I was pooped was I answered about a million questions in an hour running around on flip-flops. Should add the idea of wearing sneakers to this class description perhaps. PLUS after teaching WHAM-BAM at 8 and 9:30, I had MY own class (the joys of being a grad. student) at 11am where we did a hardcore lecture on phonetics and their symbols. By 12:30pm, I was ready for a nap.

I really really really have high hopes, however, in retrospect. After they get to read more on blogs and see what other students are doing (on Tuesday and further on in the course), I think everything will open up. Ideas, communication, attitudes.

For myself: I do realize that I have turned into an exhibitionist on my personal site... girls/women are socialized to not be TOO out there even when they do say things off the top of their melons. Plus, I think you are onto something Cindy when you mentioned that you and I are more likely/can more easily say 'whatever' because our jobs will rarely be in jeopardy.

I really stressed with my students that they can be as personal as they want, etc... I also stressed that from 4pm to 10pm on campus it is REALLY tough to get onto the internet with a good/fast connection speed. Too many people are on then. I thought warning them of that would help a tad.

Kevin, I wish you had a better room... AND I will take OFF the 'Dr.' on my site in reference to you. :-) AND, YES, ndsu should have more online courses.

Off to a wedding tonight, then tomorrow I will be putting all the weblogs into a list on my bisonblog page... should we share blogs between classes?

My class was okay--maybe 6 or so said they knew what they were getting into; a few expressed concerns about being in over their heads. One of the interesting issues in my course will be the classroom space--we are stuck in a hole behind the gym in Benson Bunker FH. I can't wait to get the computer classroom on Friday. Just wish I had scheduled more classes their. Seems to me that at overcrowded U's like ours, we would probably do well to move more courses online. This classroom is tiny, tiny, tiny and the air conditioner (thank goodness their is one!) provides a breeze, not exactly a cooling effect.

I'm happy to be the hunter, and scholar, and maybe even a PC-Rat who goes out and brings back goodies to the nest. It's true--I really dig that role, the scurrying, the scrounging. In other contexts, I have often referred to myself as a mouse with a plan. Just dig the rodent subjecivity, I guess.

"Rats" are also people who tell-all, rat-out others, so maybe blogging will bring out that rat in me. I am pretty aware of audience and possible effects: might be the tenure-track effect, or just a personality trait--hyperaware of who is in the room, what his/her power relation is to me, how my language might be perceived, etc. Starting to lose some of that hyperawareness, I think.

Kevin, you don't HAVE to be the scholar.. sheesh... Maybe you are more of the 'hunter' in our group and Cindy and I get to cook it all up.. make it look good and sound good to the students. Does that work better? Great/funny reference to Gilligan's Island.. hee hee. I always connected with Mary Anne. Tomboy.. and hey, wasn't she kind of the professor's sidekick in his experiments? Hm. And to respond to your blogs of 3 thing.. yea, I am going to delete, I think, my Xanga teaching blog. I like the one I made for my web site. My own design, etc. So I'll have my personal one, a teaching one of my own, and Ours. Less is more.

I think later on WE will want to read our process. And heck, I think the students may find it interesting after they blog a bit to read the problems we had. Show them we are human too.

The bummer feeling I keep getting is when I think of English 120. I won't want to stop doing this sort of stuff.. I will definitely have to have them blog then too... and use things off of the web.

So what's going on at the Plains Art Museum? I have Betsy's class til 7:30. I am curious.

Sybil, at first I thought Blogs of 3 were a little silly--I was just stuck in the email mode. But I have been coming back to the site and raiding old posts in a way that is sometimes more difficult to do than in email--easier scrolling here, for one. And with permalinks, we can actually link to any of our entries (like the day I was going crazy finding stuff on the web. And, now that we are officially adding entries to our teaching journals online, collaboratively, we will have entries we could include in our works cited. In other words, the teaching / research process is "turned out on the web" and is available for study by ourselves and others. The MVE project I did with Mary, Dayna, and Lynne was a move towards turning our process out, but blogging really simplifies the process.

Does anyone want to read our process?

How come I'm always the scholar? The Professor lived in a shack of his own on Gilligan's island, while Mary Anne and Ginger were right across the beach. The story of my life. Ooops, now we can't use the blog as part of our research.

p.s. Kevin, your blogging is very useful to me. If that's not a good enough reason to continue, I understand. You have found quite a bit of interesting things. Maybe... (this is a 'maybe') we three work together because you find the stuff- the scholar, Cindy asks the tricky questions- the philosopher, and I, besides being the peon, am at the students' level (a bit more) and can communicate a little better to them- the communicator. ??? Does that make sense? Probably not.

Hey, I am still here Kevin. YOU were the one, as well as Cindy, that left me alone on this thing awhile back. So there!

Well, I had my first day of classes. All went well. Turns out students would rather write down that YES they took the class because it was technology-based on my little informational cards RATHER than raise their hands in class. Hmph. Plus, one e-mailed me already telling me he was into DHTML and knew how to CODE and stuff. Holy cow. So, perhaps HE can teach the class when we get to putting stuff on the web. Maybe. :-) Other than the fact that it was a warm day to be trucking all over campus, the day went well. Really well. Especially for having purple hair. I am such a spaz that I am sure the students have *great* opinions of me. Oh well.. it's not like that is my first priority when teaching. Gotta make them THINK, LEARN, READ, WRITE. And Kevin, I don't think a piercing will help, but it's worth the facial shocks you see...

I didn't really go into WHAT a weblog is.. figured that it would be simpler for them to discover on their own. [will talk more about it Thursday] It's hard to describe them anyhow. So, they were assigned to go to mine (my teaching one that is).. put the word "blog" in a search engine.. read Blood's article AND go to the EbscoHost and find the "Needed: A New Literacy" article. Those two items should give them perspective on blogging AND the questions we will be asking in this class. Education and Technology. Smack 'em together and what do you get?

I may have to use My Story on Thursday as to WHY I got into blogging. To tell my story. To express my unique, exhibitionistic self. To simply write MORE.

So that is me for the first day. I was excited and not nervous... which was the way to go. Good luck to you two!!

Hhmmm, can't seem to get anyone else to blog now. From slacker to leader-without-a-pack. Oh well, I bet my compadrees are busy, busy, busy.

I can't quite believe I am sticking with this. I love and hate my Tinderbox--I'm always messing something up on that blog . And as a Mac-daddy, I have always had problems with blogger. Neither have won any human-computer interface design awards in my books. But yet, I'm more and more compelled to write.

Something is happening here, but I don't know what it is, Mr. Jones.

Sybil and I looked at our class lists--seems that we probably have many students who have chosen the course for the content focus. I have never had so many computer science and computer engineering students in a 110 class before. No AHSS students--interesting.

I also got my archive / perma-link problem sorted out on my personal blog site. So, if you want to check out my filter of an essay about McLuhan's implication's for education, the link should take you right there.

I was thinking last night that it might be a good idea for the three of us to blog on here during the semester--keep our teaching journals here so that we can see how each other's classes are going, and so we can keep a conversation about the course going as part of our research. Does that make sense to both of you? Nothing major--ten minutes after each class, or just as regularly as possible.

Might also be a good place to link to student blogs we want to share with each other, resources we keep coming across, etc.

I have set up a course homepage. I have links to your existing sites, but let me know if you move your course homepages.

Hey, how come I am the only one still using this blog?

Megnut's column "What we are doing when we Blog" from June of 2002 provides what might be considered a sharpened or mature definition of weblogging. Her anatomy of a weblog consists of "links," "time stamps," and "permalinks". The first two have been frequently discussed; the "permalink" hasn't been much discussed in the material I have been reading, but it is a feature I need to reference in my previous post. I put in a link to my weblog, but if I had targeted my Powazek permalink, you would have been take directly to that blog entry, and not to the most recent entry in my weblog. In a month, a reader will have to search through entries to find Powazek.

I've been reading We've Got Blog, a collection of essays from 1998 on about blogging. Most are enthusiastic about Blogging's possibilities--surprisingly inspiring. We've read some: Blood's history and perspective, Powazek's essay, which I filtered on my new blog site, and a piece from the New Yorker about the Pyra gang that I read in 2000 but had not followed up on. I missed the boat one time--maybe I'll catch it this time.

later
(re-ivigroated blogger wanna be)
kb