Thursday, November 14, 2002
First posting in 10 days. I have dropped down to once a week on my class blog. How have you two been doing? I haven't even made the time to check up on you. One thing is clear about my blogging experience--momentum is hard to keep. Maybe the lack of community (just the 3 of us), maybe just the pressing nature of day-to-day, maybe the absence of anything to say. Is your personal blog still trucking along, Sybil? I think my student who kept a blog before the semester began has kept some momentum.
Anyway, something to reflect on in the many journal articles we will be writing. We need to pull together a final survey (I'll check my draft), and gather whatever info we want/need.
As for class, my group finished up stretch presentations on Wed. I am pretty sold on the stretch assignment. I think almost everyone has said something like "this was fun," even when their project didn't quite work out. I ended up with quite a wide range of projects: two power point presentations, one movie, 8 websites, all doing very different things (Flash on one, photo manipulation on another, home-made weblogs on 2, more traditional personal web sites for 2, a very personal one about a students battle with Cancer, one discussion board), 2 CAD projects, 1 computer program learner, one Mathematica learner. If you do the math, you can see that I am down to 15 students
; never really had more than 18, but the course (and life) has taken a toll on the class. Imagining a kinder, gentler class for '03.
Tackling Gergen on Friday. At least my expectations will be reasonable--very tough essay, not expecting students to be all over it. Will try to go in and put the issues in language they understand. One student said something like "8 pages!" when the essay printed--that disturbs me a bit. I think we ask them to do so little reading in 110 and 120, and the thought of an 8 page essay horrifies some students. McLuhan drew on some research on the physiology of reading to say that even in the 1970s, adolescents were having trouble reading because their eyes were not strong enough (i.e., they didn't have the necessary muscular strength to stay focused on line after line of text). Makes a lot of sense to me. Maybe we need to present 110 and 120 to students as an "exercise" class--read for an hour everyday, build up your eye muscles, and see how much more quickly and effectively you can read by the end of the semester.
Anyway, something to reflect on in the many journal articles we will be writing. We need to pull together a final survey (I'll check my draft), and gather whatever info we want/need.
As for class, my group finished up stretch presentations on Wed. I am pretty sold on the stretch assignment. I think almost everyone has said something like "this was fun," even when their project didn't quite work out. I ended up with quite a wide range of projects: two power point presentations, one movie, 8 websites, all doing very different things (Flash on one, photo manipulation on another, home-made weblogs on 2, more traditional personal web sites for 2, a very personal one about a students battle with Cancer, one discussion board), 2 CAD projects, 1 computer program learner, one Mathematica learner. If you do the math, you can see that I am down to 15 students
; never really had more than 18, but the course (and life) has taken a toll on the class. Imagining a kinder, gentler class for '03.
Tackling Gergen on Friday. At least my expectations will be reasonable--very tough essay, not expecting students to be all over it. Will try to go in and put the issues in language they understand. One student said something like "8 pages!" when the essay printed--that disturbs me a bit. I think we ask them to do so little reading in 110 and 120, and the thought of an 8 page essay horrifies some students. McLuhan drew on some research on the physiology of reading to say that even in the 1970s, adolescents were having trouble reading because their eyes were not strong enough (i.e., they didn't have the necessary muscular strength to stay focused on line after line of text). Makes a lot of sense to me. Maybe we need to present 110 and 120 to students as an "exercise" class--read for an hour everyday, build up your eye muscles, and see how much more quickly and effectively you can read by the end of the semester.
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