New Semester, New Try at Regular Blogging!

I set up this blog because I thought it was only fair that if the students in Instructional Applications of the Internet were expected to blog regularly, then probably the professor should, too. Then, of course, I only actually used it for half the semester, at most.

Time to try again.

The idea here is to reflect on the course and comment on new ideas in using the Internet in instruction. So, let's see: This summer's course is off to a good start, I think. It is much smaller than in Spring, in two senses. First, there are half the number of students--11 rather than 22. Second, it is only five weeks long rather than 15/16 weeks. I usually have this course be a Summer II course, which is 7 or 8 weeks. I think what happened was that I wanted to do only two courses at a time, so I made Instructional Design Summer II but made this one Summer I so that it did not overlap with Learning Theories in Summer III.

Anyway, the initial reactions are probably intensified in a five week session. Yes, it seems pretty chaotic right at first. Everyone is trying to set up accounts in different places, usually learning some new technologies, and trying to figure out what to work on when. And yes it may seem overwhelming.

But all this is kind of how things work these days. We really can't spend just a few days on blogging and expect to "get it." Blogging has to take place over a period of time, and five weeks is about the minimum for that. Similarly with working together on a wiki: it is done best over a period of time. As are discussion groups and other social aspects of the course.

That's why these are all things that we try to get started quickly. Then we work on them sort of "in the background" the rest of the semester, while doing more traditional kinds of projects such as WebQuests, podcasts, websites.