Teaching, Learning, Blogging

The Year of the Blog: Home
Here's the article that finally convinced me to give this whole blog thing a shot. It discusses using weblogs specifically in writing classrooms.

What's up with Celene Carrozza
This is what I mean by teaching using blogs rather than Bb. Here is a student from the morning section who took it upon herself to create a blog of her own as a place to write/publish. This is just one example of what I hope students do with the freedom to write for a "real" audience, and it would never happen with Bb.

I like the idea of an electronic classroom. I agree that most students would probably like this as well. On the other hand I have run into many people who have taken online courses and get frustrated with the lack of support, or lack as they see it, from the professors. Whether that means poor response time or the fact that sometimes the written (or typed) word can be missunderstood. I guess this may come down to learning styles. Some people just need their hands held sometimes.

My experience at Aiken Tech is that the students like Blackboard. They would rather sign on electronically and take the class instead of sitting in the classroom. I tend to think of it more like the electronic version of correspondence courses.

The text on this template was far too large, so I messed with the font sizes a bit. I need to work on understand style sheets someday.

I have invited Jeff Mastromonico, Michael Casdorph and David Adcock to participate in the blog and updated some of the links.

I have been batting around the idea of asking students to participate in this blog or creating another blog specifically for them. On one hand, I would like the student voice intertwined with the faculty and technical voices in a single forum. On the other hand, as we expand the population to include all these voices, I wonder of we will inadvertently contribute to shutting down open and honest conversation. Perhaps a separate blog is better. Hmmmmmm . . .

I'm going to wait and hope Michael, Jeff and/or David jumps in with a comment on the matter.

At an achingly slow pace, I am getting things back in order around here. I've re-updated the links, but have many more to add. I'm about to tell Jeff M. and David A. that I am inviting them to join the blog.

homoLudens:
Oops. I also have to link here to see about Manila. I've seen sites supported by Manila and will have to take a closer look.

::: XPLANA.COM ::: Exploring how we can learn and teach with technology
I had to link to Laura Gibbs' discussion of Blackboard versus blogs in the classroom, if only because she does an excellent job of explaining my problems with Blackboard. Frankly, I'm still upset that it took me so long to understand my frustrations with Blackboard as little more than a technical replication of the traditional classroom. Outside of matters of convenience, what can Blackboard do that one cannot do without the technology? In other words, I'm beginning to feel that unless the technology adds something to the class that cannot be done in a traditional setting, what's the advantage? As far as Blackboaard is concerned, I don't think there is much of an advantage, certainly not enough to spend time in class teaching students to use the technology.

Near the end of the Fall 2002 semester, one of my students put it best. When asked about Blackboard as a part of the class, he responded that the best part of Blackboard was the gradebook that allowed him to check his grades even before he received his paper with my comments. Yek! Raather than stop using the gradebook, I decided then to simply stop using Blackboard.

Blogs as Course Management Systems: Is their biggest advantage also their achille's heel?
Lowe's discussion was prompted by John Kruper's thoughts on blogs as, at this point, inadequate as course management tools. While Kruper acknowledges the same arguments I've tried to articulate in defense of blogs rather than the commercial cms's such as Blackboard, he also notes that the more administrative aspects of course management are not available yet on blogs.

Hmmmmm, I'll admit to a personal aversion to class administration as something I find mundane and, well, rather unimportant, to my goals when planning a course, syllabus, etc. That may explain some early frustration that I sense from some of the students in the laptop section, even more so than in the more traditional section, of the course. Nonetheless, we meet regularly and discuss these issues. And, other than the commenting feature, I've used the blogs as personal web publishing rather than collaborative spaces to prevent the "free-for-all" feel of blogs that I both love and despise simultaneously. Still, some students seem to be wondering whether they should pay attention to the course blogs or the class lecture/discussion. Of course, I say "BOTH!" but that doesn't seem to be working.

We'll have to see how this plays out over the course of the semester.

Will Blogs Grow Class Management Wings? - cyberdash
Charles Lowe isn't particularly keen on the future of most blogging tools as couse management systems (CMS) (although he has made an exception for Manila). He maintains that open source content management systems (CMS--same acronym, unfortunately for the acro-maniacs) offer more flexibility in their modules to perform the task.

Oh. Apparently, my rescuing of the blog resulted in losing my links. I expected as much and will update them as soon as I get a chance.

Long time, no blog, eh?

Well, I was showing the laptop class how to change the template and how necessary it is to keep a copy of the template before one does so when I destroyed the old template. Undaunted, I moved on with the template revision and promptly "ruined" the entire Laptop 101 blog. That was about three weeks ago. I managed to recover it, though, and provided a good lesson for the students.

Be that as it may, I have some catching up to do. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll need to update this blog with the trials and tribulations of the class. For now, all one needs to know is that the laptop section of aegl 101 is still meeting in one of the computer classrooms rather than using our wireless connections. I hope to move next Tuesday, but we'll see.

I have more pressing links to add right now.