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[female voice] Greetings everyone.
Welcome to Spring semester
and to Spring - almost...
I am very happy to have our
Moodle site up and running and it's only due to the heroism of Margaret,
our tech...
so that is a wonderful thing.
There are couple of changes this semester
that I made to streamline our course and make it more user-friendly.
In the Fall I noticed that
when we had the presenters writing a paper
and posing two questions, that
it made for kind of a fragmented discussion because
people weren't quite sure
if they should
respond to
the paper
and, if so, which points in the paper
or
the first question
or the second question
or some combination
of those...
and so
this semester
the facilitators will not be writing a paper - you may have noticed
this in the
Syllabus
and rather than
two questions
on Monday morning the facilitators will have read the readings and will
post only one question.
And then, just like last semester,
everyone will have read the readings and posted their first post and their first
response
by midnight on Wednesday
and then the conversation will continue.
So
it may begin
on Monday, but it needs to begin
at the latest by Wednesday night.
Remembering that that gives
some people who need that first two days to to read the readings ...
gives those people that time.
Another change is that
instead of having
a forum
format where you have to drill down one or two levels to see
the proposed exam questions
that each team
proposes,
we will have one Google doc
- you may have noticed this already - and that one Google doc will be arranged
by week.
And so, for example
in Week Two
everyone
will be
putting their and every team will be putting their question in that
box for Week Two
and then what will happen is everyone will be able to see it
and
then everyone will
to be able to converse about the question... possible responses
in that one box so you won't have to
go into each
thread
in a forum format - I think that will make it easier also
for people to
study for the exams.
Overall
what we're shooting for
is
a streamlined process
so that now you have an opportunity to go
below the surface to more
deep critical analysis; to have more fun playing with the ideas;
to respond
to the questions presented in the context of your own analysis of the
readings;
and I think it'll be
a lot more fun
and it'll be
more
challenging
as well.
So...
I am very much looking forward to this semester
as I hope
you are as well.
We will also
.. another change is that we will also have one or two Elluminate sessions
where we'll be
sharing in real time.
You are making great posts on our wall wisher wall
and I think it
is turning out to be a way to get a window into who each other is
that
we really didn't have with those tiny, little pictures in the Fall. So thank you
for being generous
with
the parts of yourselves that you're sharing there!
So - I'll sign off...
until I talk to you again... Bye.