Forty four years later

Some of your blogs have reminded me of my feelings the first time I took a computer class in the spring of '67. I was, and probably still am very introvert, and I knew no one in this class of about 200. The room where we punched the holes in the cards was small with very little equipment and the waiting line was always long. Many of these classmates, almost exclusively boys, were really hyped about computers and I was there to satisfy a small curiosity. I received, a low grade for this one-credit undergraduate class while I was a graduate student in mathematics at the University of Wyoming. The computer was a Philco 2000 and sat in a room behind a small window where a student would accept my stack of punched cards and a day later hand me a printout that typically demonstrated that I had a lot to learn yet. I was deadly afraid that I'd never understand computers.

There is one really great plus to being old; you can look back and see how things can turn out very differently than what one expects. In forty-four years you too will look back at some of your fears and concerns and realize how small they then seem. I suspect in 44 years, at the age of 110, I will reflect on some major changes of the years. Meanwhile, I will dwell on the simple things of blogging in education, and "how do I program iPads?"

A Great Week for CSE694

Life is good! Well, there are exceptions like trying to add minutes to the cell phone that I finally acquired for the first time two months ago. Thanks to my wife's patience, they took our money and I'm still watching the phone for the additional minutes.

But like I said, "Life is good!" My wife came home a day early from a business trip and most of you wrapped up your final reflective blog. Those completed from where I sit, and it is a rather comfortable recliner with the laptop on my, well, lap, are: Alyssa, Heather, Jan, Melanie, Nicole, Patricia, Ronnie, Russ, Sheryl, Tori and William; 11 out of 18. One blog from finishing are three: George, Mary and Sabrina. That leaves a mere four with a little to do yet. Good luck, I'll get watching and reading until the last thought is blogged.

Add to the list of good things this week the reading of your blogs and enjoying the new insights. I've heard say that one of the benefits of working with graduate students is all the research they do for the instructors. Thanks.

Getting closure in CSE694

If a three-credit course takes ten weeks, then we can assume that a one-credit course will take three and one-third weeks which will be tomorrow, Tuesday, late morning. Of course, grades aren't due until the end of the term, so there's leeway unless you want closure and the ability to move on to other courses or activities.

Looking at the blogs today it appears as if about one-third of you are finished (Jan, Nicole, Russ, Sheryl and William). Another few only need to write a final reflection (Alyssa, Heather, Mary, Patricia and Tori). The remaining are typically missing a blog on features, management, marketing and a final reflection.

Those are the numbers and numbers seldom tell the entire story. As this course evolves over time both through my research into blogging and your research and discoveries, the course becomes more sophisticated and refined. As a team working to refine the use of blogs in education, you have advanced the use of blogs greatly. I'm very excited about those of you who have attempted all the expectations, adventured far beyond the guidelines and finally have developed blogs for your educational purposes.

As questions or insights come to you, add them to your blog and we'll let this course become a life-long learning experience.

ED270 Read

Managing a class through a blog is not a piece of cake, but then when teaching is done well, it's not a piece of cake, regardless whether one is using technology or not.

Briefly reviewing the blog entries of ED270, I find some blogs well done, some lacking some postings that will be helpful summarizing this class, one completely missing and several with URL addresses that are missing (Andrew, DavidC, Heather and Naomi). Email me your URL address at saxowsd@wou.edu.

At this point you should have four blog entries: an introduction of yourself, a blog from the first week about Web2.0, one from the second week on images and the last about videos and movies. Hopefully in the next week we all, including me, will get caught up.

The News Today

I suppose I need to blog about today's and recent news about Apple. Those of us interested in travel and other things that money can buy, regardless of what computer we favor, wish we had bought Apple stock a long time ago. It sounds like the stock is dropping with the announcement of Job's stepping back from day-today management of Apple for health reasons, and now or soon might be our opportunity to get some cheaper than normal stock in Apple.

Apple was also in the news by its absence at the annual show-off-your-new-electronic-toys show in Las Vegas earlier this month. Apparently the big new toy, the new iPad, wasn't ready for show and tell. But the intriguing a toy may be, the more serious the investigation into the toy becomes. Rumor has that there are cameras in the front and back of the new iPad, for taking pictures and videos and for Skyping, and it doesn't fit in the old folders and covers. Watching the advancements in the first round of iPad and the criticism on missing functions, I'm guessing that there will be many other new features as well.

Closer to the human side of life, my prayers continue to go out to the victims of the Tucson shooting and their families. Of course, my thoughts return to the struggles for civil rights in the 60's and even today. May our technology be a tool for greater civility and not a device to destroy humanity.

Promoting your Blog

Of course, if your blog is designed for a captive audience such as your class, promoting your blog is unnecessary, but if you want your blog to be a resource for other teachers or a discussion forum for peers around the worldwide, some techniques for promoting your blog are important.

Consider some of these which are summarized from http://weblogs.about.com/od/marketingablog/tp/10BlogResolutions.htm

1. Increase the frequency of your posting.

2. Respond to more comments generating more interaction

3. Get rid of unnecessary and perhaps annoying blogs in your blogroll

4. Get rid of annoying or distracting gadgets

5. Learn something new like videos and podcasts

6. Try new things, like maybe a gadget that generates more interaction

7. Promote your blog like through social bookmarking

8. Interconnect more like through twitter, facebook and others

9. Enhance the appearance by trying another blog site other than blogger.com

10. Upgrade your blogs functionality, try Wordpress

About half way

After revisiting my goal and objectives for this course, as well as the specific activities, using this time as a formative assessment, several points have come to my attention. Perhaps in my balance of allowing students to guide the direction of the class and dictating the direction myself, I have leaned too far to the former. The loose structure has frustrated some.

One of the observations of this class is that because the class is quite large (in the past I've had about 6 students) more students have adventured into advanced features more quickly then anticipated. Perhaps it's just a great class of students, and I think it is. The plan was that about now we would be adding movies, and images, and links to other sites. Then we would add resources and upgrade our gadgets and try the RSS feature. Some of you have done all of these and blogged about them. Hopefully others will be able to do this soon and benefit from their classmates' discoveries.

So there are three activities that I expect us to do before we end the class with a personal but professional reflection of the value of blogs in education.

One of the bigger questions that remains is how do I manage my blog, the blogs of my students or peers if I use my blog in that way, and the blogs of other persons, both professional and personal, so that I receive the information I want but not overwhelm myself. In other words, the management part of this process. Compare ideas on your blogs and experience with some of your ideas, culminating with a blog describing your management plan.

Next there is a question of how do I promote my blog so that I'm not just writing to myself and so that I can get feedback from others. Discuss this in your blogs, do research from journals and on the Internet, and finally design and write your marketing plan in a blog.

Lastly, write a summary, a reflection of what you have learned about blogging, particularly in education, and how you might use blogs, or why you might not. I encourage you to complete this process by the end of January. I will continue to encourage and add resources for these last blogs.

I expect that by the time you have resolved all these issues from your first introductory blog to your final reflection you should have posted some dozen or more blog entries and commented on many, many more.

Watch for me on Friday.