Delicious Discussion in Turkey!

I am enjoying my first morning in Konya, Turkey and after a few challenges, I am ready to make a blog post from here. It turns out that Blogger is so smart that it changes the directions into Turkish and Evrim is not here yet to help me. After a few errors, however, I was able to remember how to make a new post without using the prompts. Here's hoping that smart Blogger does not change my post into Turkish for you!

I tuned into the delicious piece of the readings discussion and enjoyed the first few posts. I tend to read each post and then think: "I really like that quote also". I hope that finding these delicious pieces helps as we work to make the readings real and useful to all of us as professionals. I know that I especially enjoy this particular exercise.

I also use the delicious assignment to change the focus of reading discussions----I find that using the same format for reading discussion can get tedious for students (and instructors) and I work to keep things lively for all of us. Your suggestions in this area are most welcome.

The weather in the United States has caused problems for my colleagues coming to Turkey, so it looks like I will need to do two keynote talks tomorrow. The first one is on TPACK and the second was to be a panel of journal editors talking about how to publish your research. It looks like I will be the whole panel unless travel challenges improve for my colleagues. Wish me luck! We will post the TPACK presentation on our class website.

Catch Uo Week---a Few Worries

Evrim and I decided to devote Week 4 discussion time to getting both the Week 2 and Week 3 discussions started up and vibrant. When I visited these discussions today, I was a little disappointed in what I found. I am looking for student discussion posts that demonstrate a strong knowledge of the readings and an ability to synthesize the readings and apply them professionally. I want students to learn to use the readings as they confront issues of learning and technology use. I had hoped that the Week 2 discussions would result in group definitions of constructivist learning theory, relating these definitions to ideas from our other two authors. And I was looking for similar insights from students around our Week 3 readings. I was excited to find the work of Group 1 in Week 3-----students were very close to my expectations for the discussion. And then I remembered that it is only Tuesday and that the other discussions would probably continue to add specifics and richness as our catch up week continues! I decided to send an email to encourage discussion participation this week.

I know we lost momentum with the Moodle blip and I look forward to regaining this momentum this week!

Back on Track (We Hope)!

We think that Moodle is now updated and that all our discussions and assignments are back. Evrim and I did the Week 4 video this morning and we are going to use Week 4 to catch up with both our Week 2 discussions and our blogging discussions in Week 3. We will then be ready to begin new topics for Week 4. We will have an application assignment focused upon Pre-Writing during Week 4, but no new discussions. Whew!

I am impressed with our class reaction to our mini-crisis. Most students seem to understand technology issues and the need to work around these issues. We noted that Facebook and Diigo became more active during our Moodle downtime and we were glad to have these alternative communication avenues. Thanks to all of you!

In other news, we will not be scheduling office hours unless you tell us there is a need for this synchronous communication. It appears that our other numerous channels of communication are working.

Challenges with Moodle

As you all know, our Labor Day weekend was marred by Moodle giving us technical fits. It all started with a 3-hour announced shut down to update the server and it is now Tuesday morning and our challenges have not ended yet. I first heard about the problems from 505 students and initially I was hopeful that we would have things back up and running quickly. Wrong!

As of Tuesday morning, we are ready to begin Week 3 and we have all the necessary materials up and running. We will make the Week 3 assignments and discussions due one week from today on Tuesday, Sept. 14. We will return to the Week 2 discussions when we have the materials updated and we will then assign a due date for these discussions.

I am a bit concerned that our Moodle challenge will interrupt the process of getting into the flow of the course, but I am hopeful that students will be flexible. Perhaps we can view this as an example of what to do when the technology lets you down!

Be sure to keep us informed if you have Moodle problems this week and we will work together to get things off to a good start. I was very impressed with how quickly some of you noticed our Moodle problem over the weekend----thanks for that.

Another interesting wrinkle in all of this is that the type of home internet service you have influences how long it takes for the Moodle updates to take effect. Our technical consultant just told me that those of you on Mediacom at home may not have the updates until Tuesday evening, while Qwest users have more frequent server updates.

Please share your reactions and stories about our "Moodle blip"!