Lessons Learned--What I Would Do Differently

This is only the second course in which I have used any of this sort of technology and I am trying to learn from each of these experiments. What I do know is that my students are incredibly tolerant of and enthused by trying to do something like this that is different and where it is very obvious to them that I am a co-learner. They may not always like every part of the process, but they are, and should be, proud of their results. They bring and share their various abilities to the table and we really do enter into a learning community when this happens.

I think I would be more insistent about the timing of the contacts next time around. I would build in some way to assure that an initial email to the person was sent early on (perhaps via requiring a copy of it to be sent to me). I would also include a few more workshop days in order to solve some of the individual issues that arose so that everyone could further benefit from the growing collective knowledge. I would also probably use a website the next time around. The advantages to the Blog are that it is easier to develop aesthetically pleasing sites and teach the technology. The down side is that there is no way to assure that these entries will be here in a year since each student is responsible for maintaining their own site.