I have a Podcast...I just can't listen to it

So I used Allen's idea of creating a commercial for one of the classes I teach, English 151, by having two sections of the same course give a brief line or two of commentary. They discussed what the course consists of and what future students of the class can expect. I thought if it turned out well, I could use it on my website and potentially have future classes listen to it during the first week of the semester. After editing it at home, eliminating all of the ummms and the awkward pauses, combining the commentary from both classes into one file, and saving the changes, I somehow can't listen to the new version...only the old ones. Apparently, I have to download something or other onto my computer, but I just haven't had time to figure out what yet. So to make a short story long, my podcast is still forthcoming!

Threaded Discussions

Students filter in the room with their heads downs, feet dragging, and plop languidly into their seats. Trying to get them to participate in the class discussion is like pulling teeth because it's an early morning class and you can see the fatiuge on their faces. It's not that they aren't invested in the class that day-okay, on occasion that's the case-but that they're just not fully awake.

An instructor has difficulty in always touching upon all of the points he/she wanted to make in a class. Sometimes the class gets hung up on a topic, the conversation moves in a different direction, people are asking questions, and before the teacher knows it, the class time is over. Somehow those brilliant and thought-provoking questions were just never addressed to the students.

The cases listed above are extremely common and are both good reasons why utilizing some form of threaded discussions can be helpful in a class. There are a multitude of other practical reasons, of course, as this article points out. Regardless of the reason a thread is began, allowing both students and instructors the time to analyze readings and formulate thoughts-posting along the way-can be extremely beneficial, especially for various forms of learners. Since many instructors present so much material in an auditory manner, those that do not digest and comprehend material very well in this manner may be able to do so by visually seeing the same ideas and questions presented to them on screen.

Wiki Project

Here is my fairly straightforward and basic wiki project that I would like to try with some current students at the end of this semester-hopefully I will have some takers! It's not quite as cool as James'!

Thoughts on Wiki Project

In thinking how to combine some of the new things I've been picking up from this class and using a wiki post as a final project, I'm toying with the idea of a collaborative research project-which is exactly what a wiki consists of anyway-but seeing how it works out within a class structure of 20-25 students, with everyone contributing, and for the most part, agreeing on the content. I'm still just playing around, but I found this wiki entry about educational templates, exercises, and previous projects that have been done on similar issues.
In order to get to this level of agreement among the class, I would have them work out ideas concerning the topic on their blog, and through the use of their RSS readers, be able to pull out articles of use, and post about key ones, synthesising and working out their research along the way. The other students would then read and comment about what others were saying, and the hope is they would collectively work toward a somewhat unified understanding and agreement of what the final research project-the wiki-would look like.

Wiki World

The imagination and thought behind Wikis is amazing. As a contributer states within Chapter 4 from Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts: "To write within a wiki is to compose within a living organism", and I definitely see this thought lending itself quite well to the composition classroom. Students, and occasionally myself included, are presented with the dilemma of writing to an audience. That is, the thought of a real-life audience is usually vastly lacking, and students are acutely aware of this. Collaboratively creating a wiki could potentially be an answer to this. I'm not sure exactly what I would like my English 151 students at KCC to collaborate on at this point, but since they each have their own computer in the classroom, they will be the guinea pigs for this semester. It will definitely be an end-of-the-semester project, but I don't want it to be a massive writing assignment since it is in the experimental stage. Perhaps they can write-and continuously revise- a short piece that can be an introduction to my students next semester.....a sort of "how to" guide to successfully completing the course (what they will learn, what to expect, etc.). I will give this project some thought over the next few weeks, but in antipication of a very small audience (just my future classes!), I have created a kind of wiki test site-those expecting and dedicated to a small amount of users-and I will be playing in the wiki sandbox (tools and tips), so I can lead my students through whatever project I decide to utilize!

RSS Possibilities

Never again will I pick up a paper and desperately search for something of interest only to have my hopes crushed!! (I'm mainly referencing the local Battle Creek paper here:) Okay, so I'm exaggerating about the never again bit, but really, why should I spend time searching through fruitless articles when truly interesting ones are delivered to me. I love this.

The possibilities to use this in the class are immense-I can now personally customize my own archive and base the selections upon the assignment the class is doing at the time. By linking the articles into something like Blogger or Blackboard, I can directly lead students to what I want them to look at and nothing else...this facet would be particularly good for those K-12 teachers out there.

On another note, while I've figured out how to link individual articles to my blog (see Minor Diversions listed in the right-hand column), I can't figure out a way to link my entire Reader site (and Rob's suggestion of trying to link a folder doesn't work), so I'm wondering if anyone else has figured it out. If so, let me know!
It's possible that it can't even be done in Blogger, and if so, does anyone know of a more advanced blogging site that may have this option?