Update on Incorporation of Topics Discussed in Williams

I reread Williams Australasian Journal of Educational Technology
2004, 20(2), 232-247. I am really struggling with the concept of how my blog will be useful. However, as most things start small, I’m willing to give things a try.

What my blog can do:

1) Provide an electronic bulletin board of sorts that students could visit in case they missed/misunderstood/slept through the announcement.

2) Provide asynchronous feedback, in the form of comments, which might be addressed quicker than email and will reach all the students who read my blog.

3) Provide me with information on whether any students are interested. For example, if I have about 30% of my students visit my block or provide me with positive feedback on the blog this semester, it will qualify as a good start.

4) Provide me with a real-time record of my thoughts and any relevant issues that came up with the students.

What my blog can’t do:

Provide the students with detailed feedback on problem solving, in both inorganic and organic chemistry. The technology is just not there. The interface will require some sort of “Chemical Structure and/or Unit Analysis recognition and voice recognition software” that will post my solutions/suggestions on the internet. Right now, it takes me about 2 minutes to write out a unit analysis/multi-step synthesis on the board—I go over about 5-10 problems in class and spend most of my time explaining. It takes about 23 minutes to draw this out on equation editor/Chem Draw, and I can’t point to things, or highlight things real time. Perhaps someone will integrate the smart board into the internet. A former colleague of mine talked about a live class where this was done on the LCD projector—it had the support of 3-4 technicians. It was great, but I don’t have the technical support.

Bottom Line:

I’m going to try this for the rest of the academic year. If I get about 50% of the classes to participate, I’ll keep it. Anything significantly less and I will stop. In either case, I will have learned something.

I'll also have to be careful. The Blogosphere can be pretty nasty place. When I was in college, a mean person could only do so much (spreading nasty rumors etc). In the blogosphere, there are a lot of mean people spreading lies and morons getting a lot of attention. To quote a famous Auror (Moody): Constant Vigilance!