Just a few days ago Google announced that it would be halting uploads to Google video. Previously uploaded content will be maintained (for now) but new uploads will stop working soon.
Unfortunately that puts me in a bit of an awkward position. I’ve been using Google Video to host “unlisted” videos at the private “intranet” section of my Speech Team’s website. I’m using Google Apps for education to host the site, and chose the Google Sites option because of the wiki-esque nature of the system. Now I’m sort of stuck. See, Google doesn’t let me embed much external content, even Google maps are too scary for Google Sites. I’ve read that fixes are in the works, but I’m skeptical that Google is not letting me embed html and iframe content because of security issues,rather they want to control what content hosts you use.
Without Google Video’s semi-private functionality, I don’t know what I am going to use to embed video. I and my kids do not want their practice pieces published online, the whole point is to see the bad things in it, make the fixes and compare versions of their speeches within the privacy of our team.
Wise up google, if you are not going to provide the same functionality in your new tools, at least open your system to allow us to embed content outside of your whitelist of “gadgets.”
This week, you will design two technology-based learning activities for your target group of learners. In the Learning Activities section of the wiki, find your page and post to it a description of two learning activities you design for your learners. Explain 1) your learning goal or what you hope to accomplish with each one, 2) describe the technology you will use, and 3) justify your choice of technology or technologies based on the cost, usability, and how well it addresses your learning goal. Provide links and descriptions of any Web-based resources you will use.
Activity A — Vocabulary Wiki Activity
(1) Vocabulary acquisition is central to all levels of language learning, and especially at the early stages, such as I teach at Fort Couch Middle School. In middle school German Classes it is easy to reduce units of study to lists of words to be memorized for the upcoming quiz. This is a dangerous area, as students are experts at rote memorization for an assessment, only to immediately discard all of that ‘learning’ as soon as the test is done
Additionally, students in my classes do not have a ‘textbook’ per se. Students know how to use online German-English dictionaries such as http://dict.leo.org but these results are often too ‘raw.’ It turns out that middle school students are pretty bad at using the dictionary to help them find German words. They can look up the meaning of German words with some success because they understand the context of the English words that are offered as meanings. When faced with the opposite scenario, students just grab at the first word that appears in the results, often using the word in the wrong context.
By using a student-generated wiki as a resource for content appropriate and previously learned vocabulary and grammar, students will be provided contextually appropriate definitions and examples of use that have been created and vetted by their classmates.
My learning objectives are:
Create a usable student generated reference
Find and correct errors in the wiki
Use “fair-use” content to enhance the vocabulary wiki entries
These objectives directly address the Communications Standard of the National Standards for Foreign Language.
COMMUNICATION
Communicate in Languages Other Than English
Standard 1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.
CONNECTIONS
Connect with Other Disciplines and Acquire Information
Standard 3.1: Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language.
COMPARISONS
Develop Insight into the Nature of Language and Culture
Standard 4.1: Students demonstrate understanding of the nature of language through comparisons of the language studied and their own.
For each entry, students are required to provide the English meaning for their German word, provide relevant grammatical information (gender of nouns, stem-changing verbs if any, verb conjugation tables), a sentence using the word, and a fair-use picture to enhance the definition.
(2) For this project I use the Wiki tool that is included in the BlendedSchools.net delivery of BlackBoard. This wiki features an easy to use WYSWIG (what you see is what you get) editor, and an intuitive clean looking interface. By nature the wiki is a ‘walled-garden’ accessible and editable only by registered students.
Other tools used in this activity are: Online Dictionaries, Creative Commons image search, and class resources, either online or in the classroom. For teaching about what a wiki is and how it works, I use the instructional video: Wikis in Plain English by CommonCraft.
Since the wiki is included with the existing software, the cost of this learning activity is not an issue. Other free wiki websites are available for educators such as pbwiki.com or wikispaces.com.
(3) This activity addresses my learning goals above, only if it is regularly updated and used by all members of the class. Time must be dedicated during class for students to get into the habit of updating the dictionary and some sort of accountability must exist for such a project to take off in the classroom. At first, I offered extra-credit for students who contributed to the class wiki. I found that this resulted in high-quality entries, created by a few hard-working dedicated students, who frankly didn’t need the bonus points to begin with. When I required everyone to contribute a minimum amount, I found that there were many more errors, and as they ran out of new ideas, the entries became less and less contextually relevant. I feel that the latter situation is preferable, especially of part of the assignment is to find and fix errors in the the wiki.
Students, especially in my middle school, are not accustomed to this style of collaborative work, where everyone’s contribution builds value for the group. Working in a loosely structured group like this is a skill that needs to be taught to students.
This week, you will design two technology-based learning activities for your target group of learners. In the Learning Activities section of the wiki, find your page and post to it a description of two learning activities you design for your learners. Explain 1) your learning goal or what you hope to accomplish with each one, 2) describe the technology you will use, and 3) justify your choice of technology or technologies based on the cost, usability, and how well it addresses your learning goal. Provide links and descriptions of any Web-based resources you will use.
Activity B — ed.Voicethread as a speech and listening tool in Foreign Language
One of the most difficult things to do during foreign language acquisition is to verbally produce language. Students can listen to and comprehend simplified language quite early, and through training can read level-appropriate text. Even writing is commonplace in the early stages of most traditional language teaching programs. When students are asked to speak, often a look of fear or anxiety is visible to me. Part of this is the concept of an affective filter. When asked to spontaneously draw upon their knowledge of the language, students freeze up and make excessive mistakes. This is summarized on the website learner.org in the teaching foreign languages section:
“The affective filter hypothesis (Dulay, Krashen, and Burt, 1982) describes the need for second-language learning to occur in an environment of low anxiety, to encourage the processing and learning of new information.”
In order to create the low-anxiety environment that is called for by Dr. Krashen and his colleagues, I will employ a series of oral practice assignments to prepare students for the end-of-year oral proficiency interview in 8th grade German.
My learning objectives are:
Lower the anxiety level surrounding spontaneous speech in the foreign language.
Increase fluency by providing a safe environment to practice speaking aloud in the target language.
Respond appropriately to spoken and visual cues in the target language.
These objectives directly address the Communications Standard of the National Standards for Foreign Language .
Standard 1.1: Students engage in conversations, provide and obtain information, express feelings and emotions, and exchange opinions
Standard 1.2: Students understand and interpret written and spoken language on a variety of topics
Standard 1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.
By design the method of these activities should vary in order to expose students to different conversational environments that may arise. The activities are not simply “conversations” as that would immediately raise the affective filter. Instead, the teacher designs activities which simulate conversational situations, or simply provide a safe place for students to record their responses to prompts and review the result with the option to re-record.
Student Bios/Personal Collage — Students create a VoiceThread with pictures from their family and lives. They record a narration about themselves and their family members in the target language. (Advanced: make the assignment into an interview, students ask questions in the VoiceThread and the author responds in the target language.)
Guided discussion – Students are broken into small groups and assigned to a teacher authored VoiceThread. The group then comments on the photos or videos presented, in the Target Language.
Advanced Level:
Narrate events in a story — although more presentational in nature, the activity encourages students to take risks with language to make a story more fun and exciting. Students often try to outdo each other with the silliest storyline.
Students-as-teachers/Virtual Field Trips — Students are assigned to research a city in Germany. As their final report-out, they create a VoiceThread with media spotlighting the attractions in the City. They record themselves giving a virtual tour of their city. (Even More Advanced - students ask and answer questions on each other’s VoiceThreads.)
(2) This technology is easily accessible from school computer lab facilities. The basic requirements are:
Web-capable computer
Functioning microphone
Functioning speakers
ed.Voicethread subscription
For this activity I will be using our department’s Logitech Premium USB Headset Microphones. These headsets retail online for around $50 each. We purchased a class set of 35 at a lower price using education discounts. These headsets are the upper-end of what is required for recording. The benefit of buying higher quality equipment is the quality of sound recorded.
ed.Voicethread.com is Free for an individual account, although there is a one-time $10 fee for validating educational users. The ed.Voicethread section has the added benefit that content can be placed with a walled-garden of validated educational users. This means that, if i choose to allow it, my students could interact with students from all over the world who are registered through ed.Voicethread.
A teacher may register his or her students for an annual fee of $60, or a school may purchase VoiceThead accounts for all students $1 per user per year.
As this explanation is getting rather lengthy, I will allow the following example to explain the functionality of VoiceThread.
(3) Based upon my own initial user experience, and that of my students there is a small learning curve for end-users when they first try to use VoiceThread. The interface is intuitive, especially for anyone with experience using Web 2.0 tools online. From an administrative standpoint, I would say that the set-up of user accounts and the backend administration is moderate, requiring import of comma delimited files of student usernames and passwords. Once the accounts are created, it is easy to assign students to groups and create the initial Threads. Recently (2/8/09) ed.Voicethread upgraded their administrative tools to improve user experience.
I find the cost of this tool to be a great bargain. For $60 I have registered over 1/3 of the students in my school to use VoiceThread for my class. This is about 200 students. For the initial run of voicethread, the fee was paid out of pocket. (I’ll get it back when I submit my taxes this year.) I hope that future costs will be covered by the departmental budget. The additional costs of the microphones was previously covered for local audio recording, but have been an investment with multiple uses including VoiceThread recording, Listening Comprehension testing, Podcast recording, etc.
Finally, VoiceThread proves to be a great collaborative tool with implications in any classroom. It is particularly useful for Foreign Language, but dozens of examples of collaborative presentaions in other disciplines exist. Other applications of VoiceThread incude peer feedback on assignments, reflection and much more.
Today one of my six 8th grade German classes (and a few who kids who I sprung from science & social studies classes to join us) spent about 15 minutes talking to SacschaDenzinger. I found Sascha a few weeks back when KDKA radio was interviewing Steelers Fans around the world. Sascha is the webmaster for PittsburghSteelers.de. I had not heard the segment, but one of my brilliant colleagues, Pat Palazzolo told me about it and suggested that I contact Sascha to try to arrange a contact with my class. She thought he sounded like someone who would have fun with it. She, as usual, was right. We split our conversation into a German Q & A session, followed by a bit of follow up in English. We talked about where he was from in Gemany, found it on the map & also talked about the Steelers chances in this Sunday’s superbowl, The kids were thrilled to make contact with an American Football fan in Germany and a steelers fan at that. Thanks to Sascha for the time and experience that he gave us!
I had hoped to record the segment to share on my BlackBoard class site, but somehow did not record the conversation properly. Better luck next time.
What a cool morning! I am so appreciative of the opportunity to attend the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Institute’s Discover ‘09 open house this morning. My school’s tech director was unable to attend, and asked me if I was interested in going to check out some of the programs that they are developing and implementing in collaboration with educational institutions all over the country. The focus of the open house was on five main areas.
High Powered Computing (HPC) in modern business (engineering, manufacturing, etc)
Biomedical Supercomputing
HPC & the green economy
Supercomputing hardware
Outreach to educational institutions (K-12 and universities)
Obviously the last area of focus was most pertinent. The PSC has several outreach programs, in which it “promotes the understanding of supercomputing and its application in today’s leading-edge scientific research.” I spoke to several of the PSC representatives and got an overview of all of the programs, in which they work with schools & teachers to support teaching and learning in the areas of computer science as well as other science areas.
I particularly enjoyed learning about the program for introducing Parallel Computing to High School Students. In fact, it was particularly interesting since our school’s Computer Science teacher (Todd Ollendyke) is one of the first to pilot the program as part of his Computer Science curriculum. The impetus behind the program came from recognizing that many CS students were entering university level courses with a weakness in understanding the applications of High Powered Computing and parallel programming.
The program is unique in that it is a blend of some basic unix/linux skills (which our students lack) and the C programming language. The first part of the project uses a Sudoko puzzle game, which students first program a serial ‘brute force’ solution to & then apply the lessons in parallel programming using the powerful resources of the PSC cloud cluster and the High Performance XT3 named BigBen. After the relatively simple experience programming the puzzle solution, students will experience more practical applications, and see some of the real-life power behind these HPC resources.
What’s more, the PSC outreach is not limited simply to the High School Computer Science courses. The jumpstart program using STAKEs to support STEM is perhaps a mildly confusing name for an educational program (and resources available on the linked page) for teaching about technology applications in science to a broader & younger audience (grades 8+). As the emphasis is that HPC has a real place in the world (from the Pringles factory to natural gas turbines) it seems appropriate that the programs appeal to a scientifically-minded audience to show the importance of computing technology in an ever-increasing number of fields.
note:
[Science and Technology Active Knowledge Experiences] - [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics]
The second major outreach stems from one of the primary focuses of the PSC, the biomedical research and modeling made possible by HPC. The PSC supports three programs under the heading Computational Thinking and Tools in the Science Classroom. These three programs are all designed to directly support the introduction of computation into the high school science classrooms, connecting math & the sciences in an interdisciplinary manner. CAST(Computation and Science for Teachers) offers training to science and math teachers to use modeling and simulation in the classroom. CMIST (Computational Models in Science Teaching) is a program that distributes digital models of various biological functions. The models are currently available on DVD, but will soon be offered via the CMIST Website.
Aside from the directly educational connections that exist at the PSC, I also got a chance to take a virtual tour of their computing center (to say nothing of the overview of their astounding dedicated network) using a wifi enabled robot to scoot around the computing room. Their center is in a warehouse in Monroeville, PA. What a datacenter! The tour included a look at the CRAY XT3 “BigBen”, rows of Altix 4700 machines, Pope & Salk (over 4,000 processors w/ a gig of memory on each.) And much more . . . al of this power is leveraged by various partners, like the National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation and other ‘open scienteific research’
Finally, we took a look at one of the new nodes (knocks?) on the National Lambda Rail, part of an effort to bring distant scientists together using state-of-the-art ($40,000) CISCO teleconferencing units.
I discovered today that I can stop whining about how cumbersome BlackBoard is, because in their new release it is almost all AJAX Driven, virtually eliminating all of the excess clicking and page reloads. I’m cautiously optimistic about the improvements. As I’m piloting BlackBoard through our provider BlendedSchools.net, I signed up for a preview account in the BlackBoard Sandbox. I only hope that I have positive things to report from that little experiment.
From what I’ve seen so far, this release brings BlackBoard into the Web 2.0 style. It looks less like it belongs in 1998 (Frames? Really?) and the behind the scenes stuff looks way slicker. I haven’t even gotten into the Moodle Course integration & Facebook notification options (though I doubt that will be in my middle school version)
This was harder than it looked, considering that I didn’t find any neat and simple solutions, but just parts of the puzzle.
The assignment:
You will begin by identifying a group of learners and a set of learninggoals. You will search the Web for three examples of distance learning courses or programs that serve that group’s goals (e.g., health care office receptionists seeking customer service training). For each example, describe what kind of provider it is and write a summary of its activities. Then, compare the examples to one another and evaluate how well each one fulfills your goals.
LEARNERS & PROVIDERS ASSIGNMENT
For the purposes of this research I identify my target group of learners as the professional staff at my current school district. This is a relatively large and diverse group of educators, classroom teachers, educational support staff and other specialists. The district employs over 300 full and part time professional staff. This staff ranges widely in age and experience, and most notably in their ability to integrate technology into teaching.
In my new role as a member of the “Tech Team” I intend to be quite involved in the professional development of the staff in the area of educational technology integration. As part of our new (draft) six-year Strategic Plan, one of the objectives is to:
“Develop student and staff competency in current technologies through the selection and use of technologies based in sound theory or research and which enable and enhance thinking, learning, or operational efficiency. We will work to assure that students also gain the skills and confidence to adapt to technologies that are continually changing and emerging. Our District will be visionary and vigilant in addressing the constant evolution of technology and the ways that these emerging technologies can augment thinking and learning and enhance the operation of our organization.”
The Professional Development leaders in the district have intimated that they are considering some sort of distance learning (education?) solution as a way to deliver staff development, although other options remain available. It is in this vein that I have researched three possible solutions.
While reviewing these resources I kept the following key elements of a Professional Development plan in mind.
7 Key Elements of a PD Plan ( technology or otherwise )
This year Upper St Clair entered into a pilot partnership with BlendedSchools.net. This company, based in rural central Pennsylvania, emerged from the need of rural schools to pool resources to efficiently offer a variety of courses, not least of all the AP courses that could not be offered without sufficient enrollment. BlendedSchools.net is a provider of both hosted services and pre-designed course content. The BlackBoard Academic Suite is the primary technology behind BlendedSchools.net, although the software is augmented by several additional plug-in style tools.
As you can see in the screenshot to the left, BSN provides standards-aligned courses for immediate consumption. It should be noted that the courses are provided, but an instructor must still manage the course.
Coursework is available in a variety of areas, including all academic areas, PSSA recovery and Professional Development. However, upon further examination, the coursework offered tends to be relatively poorly developed. The Professional Development modules available as part of BlenededSchools relate solely to how-to use BlackBoard.
Thus, BlendedSchools.net offers a viable platform for content delivery through the BlackBoard system, but the onus would be on the district to develop, design and implement an effective technology professional development program.
The Teacher-to-Teacher initiative, sponsored by the US Department of Education. This resource, aimed at the development of “highly qualified teachers” is a combination of different modes of instruction. Professional Development is offered in various fields, including technology through partnerships with the Teacher Training Corps (including site-visits, webinars, email mentoring), email updates, Teacher Roundtables,Teachers Ask the Secretary [of Education],Tribal Teacher Workshops.
The nature of these resources is difficult to ascertain based on the limited information on the Government website. After following up on the resources associated with the program, it appears to be a catch-all for teacher training resources. Many of the resources provided show promise.
Many Schools in Allegheny county already have a membership to the Discovery Education resources, but Discovery Education offers so much more than just the media resouces that many schools make use of.
Professional Development services to “train educators to meet the needs of technology-savvy students are available in both online (Webinar format) and in-person form by bringing in guest speakers.
I have met two of the DEN speakers, Steve Dembo and Lance Rogeux and found them to be excellent speakers.
Another valuable part of the DEN package is the included DEN Educators Network, a community of learners, including blogs from DEN Certified educators.
Evaluation:
In order to fulfil the seven elements of a successful professional development plan, it is important that the professional development team first conduct the first four steps. The leadership & vision section stems from the (draft) Strategic plan. For the first time, I feel confident that the leadership (not just a few individuals) shares a vision for where we are going in technology professional development. The planning will be intensive, an effort requiring the combined skills of the central leadership and professional development team, with feedback from the teachers themselves. The plan must be aligned to goals set forth in the new strategic plan. These broad goals have been set, but must be made concrete in the coming months.
It is my expressed opinion that professional development should reflect the same principles of education that we profess to value in our classrooms. In this case, I primarily mean differentiation of instruction. The fact is that not all teachers need the same level of technology professional development. Some are quite comfortable with technology and move quickly through training, others require more assistance and time to master the skills. A technology professional development program that challenges staff to apply their skills, and contribute to a community of learning will have to start with some sort of needs assessment.
The final three elements are time, support and assessment. Time exists for professional development, but perhaps we need to question whether the current model (in-service trainings) is the best way to deliver technology education. Support could be central in nature, but could also stem from a community of learners contributing assistance, or a mentor program for teachers. Lastly, Assessment and Evaluation means that the users of the professional development tool gives feedback on more than just a reaction-level (how did you like it), but also gives information about the level of learning, the transfer of learning into practice, and more big-picture results such as effect on student learning.
None of the three tools alone are enough to provide an out-of-the box solution for professional development at Upper St. Clair. However elements of all three could be combined to deliver a powerful package. By drawing on the familiar BlendedSchools platform as a tool for LEARNING, teachers would become more knowledgeable about the opportunities for TEACHING. Most importantly, the BlendedSchools platform allows for a level of local-control (and differentiation if developed properly.) By supplementing locally-developed content from the Professional Development team, with high-quality resources from vendors like Discovery & the Teacher Training Corps. The district can continue to “be visionary and vigilant in addressing the constant evolution of technology and the ways that these emerging technologies can augment thinking.” Which is, after all the overall goal.
The gloves officially came off today in my development of my online resources for my German course. It occurred to me that what I was doing was more than just creating online resources that went along with my teaching, but essentially writing a whole new textbook, though in this case an electronic/interactive version of what I think the textbook should look like. This seems appropriate, since our current textbook is from the early 90s, and it shows. Nobody wears clothes like that, or has haircuts like that anymore. Not only that, but the only textbook available in the US seems to be an update of the version we have with very little difference other than a few (but not all) updated pictures. My students are quick enough to display over the top cultural biases, they don’t need any more encouragement. In any case, I stray from the point of this post.
Today, I spent much of the day wrestling with the quirks of BlackBoard’s antiquated user interface. I’m not sure if the problem is that it is so backwards and poorly designed, or if I have been spoiled by smooth Web 2.0 interfaces for so long. Needless to say, I see room for improvement. Today marked the end of the first semester, which is the time span allocated for me to cover the school unit in our text. I COULD jam chapter four of the Komm Mit text into 8-9 weeks, but instead I go into some depth, and use storytelling as a big part of my isntruction (TPRS)
Since my classes are so short (20 minutes a day adds up to about 60 hours a year) it is my intention to move the majority of independent practice to the Online portion of my classroom. This is a HUGE change from the norm for my students, who, with the exception of the one other teacher piloting BlendedSchools, have a hard time getting into the routine of using the computer for much more than playing games.
Today I put real effort into formalizing a structure for the chapter that we are now concluding. I had intended to do this as I went, but now that I have a feel for what worked and what didn’t, I feel that it is best to re-vamp the content while everything is fresh. The content is broken up into Thematic Units, in this case I am working on the “School Unit.” I established the six main Lektionen (Lessons that take about 8-10 20 minute periods to complete) and the mini-lessons that I intend to design as more independent learning (with 1-2 class periods to review.)
My students need more Homework (they don’t want to hear that) and although I do buy into the concepts of TPR (it’s all in the natural langauge acquisition process.) I catch hell from the High School teacher if they don’t get the grammar on the first try. So, I have to comprimise and hope that the natural learning is complementing the intentional process of the simple Grammar explainations we do.
Resources to include within each lesson:
SCORM Instruction & Practice packages
This was my evening project — I learned how to use (Reload Editor) it is cumbersome, but I see the potential.
I’ll admit that I am not so progressive that my students rush into my class just oozing desire to learn German. In fact, as a rule students in the school are very point motivated. Since I discovered the SCORM package export in Hot Potatoes, I’ll use it, since it is much easier to use than BlackBoard’s Native tools.
Podcast
Student delivered content to drive student learning — coming soon, I swear.
I’ve been a bum for the past few months. Well, maybe that’s not so accurate, but I have sort of fallen off the productivity wagon since the disruptions of late. Though, today I started early, got energized and excited about a few new projects and hope that I can keep up some momentum in the coming weeks.
Project 1:
Making Global Connections — Recently a colleague directed me to an interview on one of our morning talk radio shows. They were interviewing Steelers Fans in all different partse of the world, among which were the UK, Germany, Pakistan and others. She suggested I try to get in touch with the interviewee, webmaster of PittsburghSteelers.de. Since Sascha seemed to put up with the antics of the radio guys, I figured a few middle school kids would be no problem. I contacted him this morning, and got a very positive response. Here’s hoping that I have a recorded Skype chat to share here next Friday!
Project 2:
Becoming an agent - maybe a change agent - this has been a theme with me recently, something that I shared in a comment on Teach42 — Steve Dembo asked, Is joining a PLN bad for morale? I commented that as I read more and more about the innovative, and impactful things that people in my PLN are using technology to achieve I find myself occasionally isolated or frustrated, but simultaneously primed to do something about my situation. At the unveiling of our new Strategic Plan this week, it became clear that it was now or never. One of our main areas in the new plan is getting the staff and students up to speed on technology issues. I stuck out my neck, copied all the higher-ups on an email to the professional development group, laid out what I have to offer, and asked to be part of the team. My offer was accepted. I hope I can make my voice heard, and help to develop a differentiated plan for technology PD in our school. There is a lot to post about later.
Project 3:
BlendedSchools.net - This summer and Fall I became one of a small contingent of teachers asked to pilot BlendedSchools.net, a BlackBoard provider. While I’m not the biggest fan of Blackboard:
I’m willing to give the platform a shot. I might not stop complaining about the endless clicks required to perform simple tasks, but at this point BB 8 is what we have to deal with. In September we lost my dad, which had a huge disrupting effect on all sorts of endeavours. (Note the almost total lack of blog posts since then) Fortunately, I planned ahead and had developed a framework, and filed in the barest of content to get started. It’s a journey, and I’m learning as I go what works and what doesn’t. But, I’m reaching the end of what I developed. So, first I’m revisiting what I did and adding in improvements while they are fresh, and then I will try to get some chunks of content in place for the second semester. This time I intend to use tools like Hot Potatoes & SCORM instructional content (and maybe a little Flash) to beef up my content.
Updated to Wordpress 2.7 — nice quick automatic upgrade through Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin. I like the Quickpress on the Dashboard where I am writing this note now.
COMMUNICATION
The gloves officially came off today in my development of my online resources for my German course. It occurred to me that what I was doing was more than just creating online resources that went along with my teaching, but essentially writing a whole new textbook, though in this case an electronic/interactive version of what I think the textbook should look like. This seems appropriate, since our current textbook is from the early 90s, and it shows. Nobody wears clothes like that, or has haircuts like that anymore. Not only that, but the only textbook available in the US seems to be an update of the version we have with very little difference other than a few (but not all) updated pictures. My students are quick enough to display over the top cultural biases, they don’t need any more encouragement. In any case, I stray from the point of this post.