I had an absolutely exciting time on Saturday in the first workshop with the Sem 2 students!
This is a bigger class than last semester, which I really noticed when I was trying to chat with Chris, Curt & Shauna in Alaska at the same time as going around to the students who needed help, to try to keep everyone going at the same pace while Chris was explaining the intricacies of creating blog accounts and editing our wiki.
The only glitch was the fact that Uploading Files had not been enabled (I should have checked this beforehand, but I wanted the students to come to a "virgin" page) so we couldn't put some of the photos I took up on the wiki on the day ... so I'll have to show them how to do that next time we meet. It's now been fixed - Bruce, our local Tech support person answered my email (above & beyond the call of duty) on Saturday night, so I've now been able to put up a few of the photos. :-)
Well, tomorrow is the big day - first workshop with my new group of 618 students. I think I have done as much preparation as I can - now all that remains is to go with the flow and let the gremlins (not my students!) do as they will. I hope everything goes well! 8-} I find I am looking forward to starting this new class, with a little trepidation too ... how will they respond to this style of course, will I and they be able to work well together, how will they learn, adapt? How can I best guide them though the experience of this unit? Do I have available the tools and support that different members of the group will need? Tomorrow the next adventure will begin to help answer some of these questions.
I'm in the process now of frantic-ally preparing for CLN 618 for Semester 2 which starts next week. I had a panic when I doscovered only at the beginning of this week that the Wiki hosting site for Sem 1 won't be available in semester 2 :-( But it looks like the tech people (or 1 person in particular) are coming through for me to provide Faculty-hosted space for semester 2. So now I'm trying to negotiate WWW access to the wiki so that it can actually be a collaborative space. We will see what happens on this one. So far the students enrolments for Sem 2 are looking good, and I find that, in spite of being sick, I am actually looking forward to teaching this unit again this semester. Last semester it was so much fun - for me at least - though a lot of hard work for both the students and me.
I must remember to put up the link to this blog on the LMS site so that students can start to access it from the beginning.
It also looks like the live online workshop with University of Alaska will go ahead again too, so that should be another great experience for this semester's students. This means, of course, that I have to go to the Elluminate site and study up on the new version of the software and the new features. I have been contact ed by one of the Elluminate reps about running throughthe new fetures with me online, so hopefully my request and timing to do this will come off & I'll be properly prepared for next Saturday's workshop!
