Who edits Wikipedia anyway?

Since this week one of the tasks on our to-do list was to get bold enough to edit a page in Wikipedia.  It got me thinking, who edits these pages anyway?  I'll admit, the closest I've ever gotten to an edit was years and years ago when I present when an ex-coworker decided to update the page of the place that we worked with information about how they treated their workers poorly.  Incidentally, that information came down quite quickly, so there are clearly people keeping up these sites.  I decided to do a little research, which I am sharing with you here.

Wikipedia is part of Wikimedia which is fairly transparent about their organizational structure.  This page  explains their hierarchical structure.  Here are some of the highlights:  Wikipedia pages can be edited by anyone and new editors are encouraged to be bold and get involved.  Interestingly, they even have a written encouragement for those more established editors to be friendly to newcomers, including a designated page on not "biting the newcomers." This site includes common errors that newcomers commit and pleas to understand the importance of new editors to the site.

This made me wonder what the community of Wikipedia editors looks like. Because clearly, there are regular editors that spend a good portion of their life.  From Wikipedia's own published information there are 25 million named users but only a portion, 118,000 "Wikimedians" have edited in the last 30 days. Who are these editors?  A 2013 article published on these individuals in The Atlantic claimed that 90% of the editors are male.  More recent information has been published examining more recent information and attempts to make the editing board more diverse.  I'll refrain from giving you a little bit of my social commentary on that one and let you know that I also found out that Wikipedia editing has been in continuous decline since 2005. A recent article in the Guardian states that the rise of mobile technology and the difficulties of using the editing language Wikipedia utilizes on a mobile phone.  But I would guess that the dedicated editors plus the handful of newcomers that come on every so often should be enough to maintain the site.  Keep in mind that at least for the English component, a good majority of the topics are already at least slightly presented on the site.  Think about it, when is the last time you looked for something on Wikipedia and there was absolutely nothing written upon it.  So it should be fair to say that the majority of the editing needed to be done on the site are more recent occurrences, which should also be the topics that are most appealing to editors. So despite the decline in editors, I would imagine that Wikipedia will continue to be a highly used resource in our online world.

The building blocks and HTML

      As graduate students, we are in the business of improving our skills. Of course to do so we constantly are drawing upon our resources.  As I am now more focused on my research in the doctorate program, I am learning more about a number of  different software programs used in linguistic coding/analysis and statistical analysis. Today entering the script for recoding files in a program used for acoustic analysis it reminded me of the same scripts that we write in during SPSS statistic analysis. Immediately, this familiarity brought forth a set of latent skills and reasonable deductions that I could apply in learning the new software.  Furthermrore, these types of scripts have a lot in common with basic HTML coding: the nature of open and closing commands, the rigidity of the process etc.  Although I taught myself a bit of HTML years ago, it just impacted me today how much these skills build upon one another.  The style of learning in coding or programming is so distinct that can be seen as training that can serve when learning new skills.  Some of the basic concepts that are learned here can be expanded upon in the ways we approach other tasks.

       Now, I would say that my ability to remember any of the limited HTML that I taught myself is quite limited, although I did switch over to HTML to fix some formatting issues that copying and pasting a title had caused in my blog a few weeks back.  Did you notice how to do that?

       If you are using Blogger for your course Blog you can switch over to the HTML view pretty easily and even if you don't know much you can start learning here with something as simple as line breaks. I wonder how many of you know any HTML or other types of coding.  If so, did you learn it back from the Live Journal days? Also, have you've seen any of the ways that this benefits you in skills you've learned since?

Sharing my curation of Spanish Language Teaching Resources

As part of our project on knowledge sharing and tracking, I have created a Pintrest site of different Spanish language teaching resources.  I have organized them into five different boards:  Language Teaching Games, Language Teaching Worksheets and Resources, Culture, New Music for Class and Music that I've Used in Class.

As part of my promotion of this resource I shared my site on my Facebook account and encouraged other Spanish teachers that I am friends with on there to interact with the site.  Additionally, I thought I would share it here as well in case any of you are interested in interacting!  Thanks.

Mental health and time spent online

I just made a casual comment to a friend of mine that is going through a rough time about the amount of time I see him on his Smartphone when I am around him. Several studies have popped up in my feeds in social networking resources that I use establishing a link between poor mental health and large amounts of time spent online. A quick search of related articles include an article published in the UK claiming that the government warns a causal relationship between time spent online and mental illness in children, another article warning that teens spend more than 2 hours per day on social networking sites are more likely to present signs of poor mental health and finally another reporting on a study in Sweden which claims a 'central link' between time spent online and sleeping disorders and depression.

Although my limited research seemed to indicate that most studies and articles published on this topic focused largely on children and adolescents, there is also a significant amount of research that examines an adult population.  However, I think when reading on this topic we need to pay attention to the difference between correlational and causal relationships.  While the majority of the articles discuss a "link" between time spent online and mental health, there was little discussion of how exactly, these two issues interact.  What is more likely, that high quantities of online use cause mental illness or that mental illness causes increased use of the internet?  I think the other option would be that the relationship is cyclical, that one of these characteristics feeds into the other and so forth.  Also, it would be interesting to consider how strong the relationship is.  In other words, clearly not everyone that spends high amounts of time online suffers from mental illness or vice versa.  However, it seems like an interesting concept to examine further.

The importance of ease of use and integration with productivity apps

As graduate students, our time in precious.  Anything I can do to be more productive or efficient when I am working frees up just a bit more time for a bit of downtime which is essential to staying sane during grad school.  So productivity apps seem like the perfect thing for me to implement, right?  Well, yes and no.

For me, if my main goal is to use a resource to help me get organized, take better notes or keep my appointments straight there are some key features it needs to provide.  First, I need an app that can be used ideally on my smartphone, my laptop and my office computer.  Secondly, it should be able to easily integrate with whatever other applications I am already using, such as my calendar or even my email.  Then there are some important characteristics of the app itself that I like to consider.  For instance, it needs to be really user friendly.  An app could have the most useful features in the world but if they don't seem logical or easy to use I know myself, I just won't end up using them.  Also, it has to be free, at least for the basic features.  I am a grad student and unless I know I love an app and really want to use it, it just doesn't seem worth the effort to try it out.

Here's a list of four apps I've tried or regularly use (presented in no particular order).

1. Evernote: I've been using Evernote for the last few years and would categorize it as helpful but not necessarily essential to my life.  I looked back over my notes and most seem to be recipes, to do lists, some contact information and some saved photos with comments.   I would say that it's strongest pull for me is the ability to store written, photo or audio notes.

2.  GoogleDrive... is my life.  After emailing myself documents for a ridiculous amount of time or lots of frustrated muttering when I realized I left my USB at home or in the office, I joined the world of cloud storage a few years ago.  And since then, life is simplified.  I can share documents, integrate GoogleDocs into my folders, even download my GoogleDrive on multiple computers.  I don't use it on my phone frequently, but I don't miss that.  This is easily one of the most useful apps I've come across.

3. Dropbox.  Pretty much the same for me as GoogleDrive except I ran out of storage much more quickly.  I personally use dropbox for my collaborations with professors on research and GoogleDrive for all other files, seems to work well to have this division.

4. Do It Tomorrow.  I am a self-professed lover of all things lists and grids so this seemed like a good idea for a while.  You check off the things you do and then whatever is left undone goes to a list for tomorrow.  A bit too simple for me, I found myself wanting to make sublists and change the order/priority of tasks and it was quite limited.

My next task planner to try out is called Swipes.  I'll install it soon and let you know what I think about it. 

NYC to turn garbage cans into wifi spots

As a Star Wars fan, I swear that one of my favorite moments was when I was walking through a street fair in Lima, Peru and saw a trash can that had been modified to look like R2D2. I know I have a picture of it *somewhere* but unfortunately we still need a way to create a search bar that sorts your photos and detects the objects/people you are looking for.  Or perhaps I just need to go back through my collection and create a better organizational system.

Regardless, this image keeps popping into my mind whenever I think about the new proposal by a NYC waste collection company that is aiming to transform public garbage containers into wi-fi hot-spots.  This is just another sign that we are in a digital age that is pushing each day closer to an open-access society.  Of course, questions should be raised about what type of data may be collected or what types of advertisements present for the company to make revenue from their investment.  I also hope that the signal is strong, because the image of folks cuddling up against trash cans to get a strong signal seems a bit rough in NY of all places. However, I really appreciate the benefits of this proposal on the city's residents and the millions of tourists that pass through each year.  The use of public space would be further encouraged if individuals have wifi access on the city streets. A number of questions arise though.  Would connection to these hotspots be automatic and seamless?  For example, would someone riding a bus be able to continuously connect to each hotspot as they pass by, maintaining somewhat continuous access or just have short periods of access as the bus came to each stop?

I am excited to see how this turns out!

The role of twitter and the hashtag in the #BlackLivesMatter movement (final post week 3)

It would be hard for anyone to still be oblivious to social justice movement that has recently gained strength and publicity in our country.  The #BlackLivesMatter movement began after the killing of Trayvon Martin in Orlando, FL in 2012. After the events occurring in Ferguson, the movement received nationwide attention from mainstream media sources and the topic was commonly discussed in public and private spaces all over our country.   The unfortunate reality is that a number of situations have continuously occurred in the time since the founding of this movement, namely between police and black communities and individuals.

It is noteworthy that the name of the movement is written with a hashtag at the beginning.  On the webpage of the organizers of the movement the homepage identifies the name of the movement with a hashtag at the beginning.

Image taken from https://wikimedia.org/ and used with Creative Commons licensing

A short selection of the hashtags that the movement has produced include the following: #blacklivesmatter, #handsupdontshoot, #heisnotasuspect, #ferguson, #thisstopstoday, #icantbreathe, #alivewhileblack and most recently following the suspect death in policy custody of acitivist Sandra Bland the newest hashtag #ifidieinpolicecustody.  For those interested, this article powerfully discusses the topic and shows some of the tweets using this hashtag.

Without steering this into a political discussion, I think there is a peripheral lesson that can be learned from the way the use of social media to drive the movement has spread like wildfire.  What I mean to say is that the prominent role of social media (especially Twitter and Instagram) in this movement (as well as many, many others such as the funding drive for ALS or the Arab Spring to name a few) can provide us a reminder of the prominence and power of social media in our lives and especially in the younger generations' lives.  It provides a forum for mass dissemination of information, commentaries, and perspectives unfiltered by other sources.  Many claim that it was precisely the power of the many voices in social media that pressured mainstream media to take the movement seriously and cover the stories coming out of various US cities.  This serves as another reminder of how Web 2.0 resources are shaping our lives and the direction of history.

Learning more about creative commons

The Creative Commons mark is something that I've come across a number of times in my research and general perusing on this internet but never had more than a superficial understanding of what it meant or how it worked. I've always been one to be worried about violating copyright restrictions even when I am just pasting an image found through the google image search database in the PowerPoints that I use while teaching in the classroom.  I often thought about how it would be more difficult to find these images when I am designing similar courses online.  Isn't it funny that the same violation didn't seem so bad to me when I knew that it is only temporary in the classroom because I don't publish or distribute my slides. However, it seems more problematic when publishing online.

Creative Commons seems to be quite beneficial for individuals looking for materials to freely use within a confined manner. Access to information and permission to use resources online clearly benefit many sectors of the population.  At first glance it seemed completely positive so I decided to take a more critical look at the service.

Image borrowed from Creative Commons licensed materials Yamashita Yohei – CC on Orange from http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/11/26/creative-commons-version-4-0/

I found a number of articles published online critiquing Creative Commons including one from the Free Software Magazine, one from the P2P Foundation, after discovering that there is an entire wiki formed for critiques of Creative Commons.  What I quickly learned was that the brief amount of research that I have done was just touching the tip of the iceberg in a debate and dialog that has prompted articles, chapters and books on the topic.  While some authors believe that the licensing process is confusing and unclear for individuals involved, others say that the process is anachronistic and generally the debate becomes intertwined with larger copyright issues.

Regardless of any controversy surrounding this issue, there are clear benefits.  I've already saved the page for search queries which can be used to search through a number of databases which store music, images and media.  Now I've found a solution to my fears of copyright infringement in my teaching!  I'd also expect that my blog will be looking prettier now as well!

My shift to a minimalist approach to resource gathering and time for a change

On my first laptop many years ago, I had over 20 folders for different types of bookmarks: potential grad schools, language learning sites, recipes, crafts, travel and more. Unfortunately, that list died when my laptop died but I found that I didn't miss it too much.  Like a hoarder with rooms full of magazines that never got read again, I felt a bit relieved to get away from a system of organization that had gotten so out of hand that any attempt to apply either of the words "system" or "organization" to it seemed laughable.  Step two in my process was the toolbar.  My top 20 sites became linked to the task bar in Firefox I believe (we are still in the pre-Chrome age) and that was that.  I opened a Pintrest account but somehow it only seemed appropriate for me to pin cooking, fashion and craft ideas to that site.  With the update to Chrome (because I've learned that all of my shifts in online habits are motivated by an imposed change or upgrade), I found that frequent visits to favorite sites just needed the insertion of the first two letters of the URL and from there, *poof* autofill did the work. And thus, the pendulum swung to the other extreme.  I don't bookmark anything anymore and I didn't really even realize how much I missed it until I signed up for a Diigo account last week, download and started using the annotation tool and watched the videos on Social Curation tools.  

Image From: skookyspry.deviantart.com and acquired through Creative Commons

Time for a confession:  I do need a way to organize the online resources that I have found. My only substitution has become copied information in my GoogleDrive folders and it isn't working for me. I spend an exorbitant amount of time going back through the channels of how I found something or shouting across the office, what was the name of that site again?  But I know myself, I will probably only give one curation tool a chance, and I need it to work well for me.  I am not so interested in publishing and sharing my curations publicly, but it would be great to share the resources I've collected with my colleagues. I am most interested in creating meaningful collections of valuable resources within my profession and studies. For this reason, I'm mostly attracted to Diigo at this point, due to the ability to highlight, annotate and save.  I'll post again soon to update on how my exploration of Diigo is going!

Witnessing a shift

This past weekend I presented at a conference in VA, aimed at high school Spanish teachers.  I noticed that several of the listed talks discussed the incorporation of technology, social media and Web 2.0 resources into the classroom.  Unfortunately, I was on my drive back home by the time these workshops were held, but regardless, the conversation started much earlier.

I was impacted by the extreme differences between the knowledge expressed by the teachers.  Some immediately displayed a harsh rejection of any interest, which in my opinion often reflects some sort of fear.  Others, however, showed a high level of knowledge and comfort with the materials. It seems as though once the instructors were able to make the leap to incorporating these resources in the classroom, the majority ended up with a high level of proficiency in the their knowledge about and use of these resources.

The organizer of the conference is a colleague of mine and asked me to start an Instagram hashtag for the conference.  She then announced the hashtag to everyone and soon more and more photos were being taken during the talks, during our lunches and in the hallways.  The excitement and interest spread and soon the same instructors that were so adamantly objecting to online resources were sharing their phones with their more tech-savvy tablemates to download Instagram.  A smile spread over my face, thinking about how sometimes it really just takes one small step and the motivation to take it, to create big changes.

Facebook tracking: real or imaginary, potential effects on behavior (final post week 2)

After the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage, an impressive number profile pictures on my news feed changed to reflect the rainbow flag under Facebook's "Celebrate Pride" feature.  Over a period of 48 hours I saw the trend spread: first it started with my openly queer friends followed by social activists and within a short period of time my liberal and not so liberal friends changed their pictures.  What was impressive was to see the current spread overseas.  My networks in Peru and other countries became rainbow colored.

Directions that the discussion on this topic has taken is to examine the role that online activities play in social change, the influence that users may have over their friends, and the silencing or strengthening of those in oppositions among others. Out of curiosity, I decided to go to my friends list and see who had decided to openly express their support.  What I noticed was that a number of folks that I know are strong supporters didn't change their photos.  The ideas that ran through my head were:  perhaps they don't like to discuss politics on social media, maybe they just don't sign on often or finally, perhaps they don't want Facebook to know how they feel about gay marriage.

Recently, I've learned that there has been discussion about whether or not Facebook used this tool to track members. I found a bunch of articles published on the topic such as this one from the Atlantic.com.  What I found particularly interesting was that sites such as Gizmodo contacted Facebook about their tracking through the Celebrate Pride feature and they received an official response from Facebook which I've copied below (from http://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-probably-tracking-all-those-rainbow-profile-1714635163) along with a portion of their commentary.

We all *should* know by now that our online actions are public to a greater or lesser extent and can be tracked presently or in the future.  As someone keenly aware of this, I still found myself having to make a choice.  Engage and publish on some topics that I might rather not have completely public, or miss out on online interaction with these.  However, I see this as a range of behavior, in which I gauge and draw limits with different types of behaviors.  How many of my friends decided not to change their profiles specifically because they assumed that this behavior would be tracked, recorded and could be used in a number of ways both now and in the future.  I believe that the key question to be asked isn't whether or not Facebook (or other sources) is actually tracking this behavior but rather how does this possibility effect users' behavior?

Building upon what we already have

As I start to think about the role of Web 2.0 resources in the classroom, instruction and learning I thin more and more on the resources that I already use in the classroom.  The blog I am following posted a great resource about the instructor's 14 essential language teaching tools that she carries with her for her face-to-face instruction.  While I would challenge her use of the word essential in the title, her bag of tricks is certainly filled with some creative ideas!

What technology are we currently incorporating in our instruction?  I decided to come up with a list of some of the technology that I use on a daily basis.  I do feel that it is important to point out that the classes I teach are part of a larger program which uses standardized syllabi, objectives, evaluations and projects.  Therefore, currently there isn't much room for flexibility and innovation.  Regardless, I certainly use a lot of "technology" already.

Presentation programs:  Powerpoint or Prezi
Physical technology in the classroom: computer, projector, BlueRay, DocCam etc.
News Websites
Youtube
Virtual surveys
Quizlet and study strategy sites
Spanish language support sites: translators *mostly to show why NOT to use them, dictionaries, extra grammar explanations, exercises online

What I find interesting is that often it is just one more simple step to go a bit further into these sites.  For example, the majority of the online resources that I have listed above have online communities that follow these.  For example, wordreference.com is by far the best online dictionary in that it has detailed forums where members expand upon the definitions provided and create long lists of further translation equivalents.  Think UrbanDictionary minus the filth! This is a great resource for my students not only to find out further information but to learn about the challenges and communities that do bilingual work. On the other hand, YouTube videos are frequent stars in my classroom but I would be quite hesitant to examine some of the comment sections that follow the music videos.

Perhaps it is just me, but I feel like there is a bit of a leap incorporating the more traditional types of technological resources into the classroom and truly integrating the use of social media and web 2.0 resources.  But like anything, it probably will occur one step at a time, rather than in leaps and bounds.

How to link the blogs you are following for the Online Community Paper to your Blogger Dashboard

I mentioned this in a post last week and it seems like a good idea to spell out how to do it.  Thanks Michelle for your comment/question!  Since I am new to the blogger world, I'll do my best to make this clear!

1) Go to your homepage or the blogger dashboard.  There are many ways to get here, but as long as you are logged in you can just go to www.blogger.com/home

2) Below the list of your blogs, you will find a header called Reading list.  Click on the button Add

3)  A pop-up window will open and you can paste the URLs of the blogs you wish to follow.

4) Use the drop-down menu to choose if you want to follow publicly or anonymously. 

The good news is that now you will have your blog and those you are following all on the same page!

I hope this was helpful.  Since I am still new, feel free to revise/expand upon etc. in the comment section!

Ideas for incorporating social media into the classroom

I found the following list on the Edutopia website and thought it would serve as a good base for an interesting discussion (Davis, 2014).

12 Ways Teachers are Using Social Media in the Classroom Right Now from A Guidebook for Social Media in the Classroom. 

  

1. Tweet or post status updates as a class. Teacher Karen Lirenman lets students propose nuggets of learning that are posted for parents to read.
2. Write blog posts about what students are learning. Teacher Kevin Jarrettblogs reflections about his Elementary STEM lab for parents to read each week.
3. Let your students write for the world. Linda Yollis' students reflect about learning and classroom happenings.
4. Connect to other classrooms through social media. Joli Barker is fearlessly connecting her classroom through a variety of media.
5. Use Facebook to get feedback for your students' online science fair projects. Teacher Jamie Ewing is doing this now, as he shared recently.
6. Use YouTube for your students to host a show or a podcast. Don Wettrick's students hosted the Focus Show online and now share their work on a podcast.
7. Create Twitter accounts for a special interest projects. My studentMorgan spent two years testing and researching the best apps for kids with autism (with the help of three "recruits"), and her work just won her an NCWIT Award for the State of Georgia.
8. Ask questions to engage your students in authentic learning. Tom Barrett did this when his class studied probability by asking about the weather in various locations.
9. Communicate with other classrooms. The Global Read Aloud, Global Classroom Project and Physics of the Future are three examples of how teachers use social media to connect their students as they collaborate and communicate.
10. Create projects with other teachers. (Full disclosure: I co-created Physics of the Future with Aaron Maurer, a fellow educator I first met on Twitter.)
11. Share your learning with the world. My students are creating anEncyclopedia of Learning Games with Dr. Lee Graham's grad students at the University of Alaska Southeast. The educators are testing the games, and the students are testing them, too.
12. Further a cause that you care about. Mrs. Stadler's classes are working to save the rhinos in South Africa, and Angela Maiers has thousands of kids choosing to matter.

I fully support these ideas and would add that popular sites such as Instagram could be incorporated into visual arts, home economics, photography courses on a regular basis and could be used to share progress on home projects to discourage procrastination on big projects.  One of the important considerations in incorporating the use of these resources is to think critically about the benefits of using them and making sure that their use is well-substantiated.

Another concern that I have is the use of technology within a face-to-face classroom and the difficulty of keeping students on track and effective use of firewalls.  Lastly, more and more, cyber-bullying is an issue in the communities of younger online users and this must be kept in mind when teachers require online participation of their students.   

It is all about energy conservation- final post week 1

The one common thread between of all of us in the class, beyond simply our membership in the class, is that we are all graduate students.  Our workload varies, the jobs we hold as well vary but the one thing I think we might all have in common is navigating the demands of graduate school.  Personally, multi-tasking has become second nature for me and just behind that is the need to conserve energy.  By this I mean, organization and strategies that save just a little bit of time each time you do something become quite valuable in that they save a lot of time in the long run.  

So, I thought I would share that my limited experience with blogs (I've only ever kept them for classes) probably means that this is more exciting to me than to others, but I figured out how to link the blog I am watching for the Community Observation Paper to the homepage of the blog that I am writing for this class.   Which means that now I just have to go to one place to update my blog and to follow the blog for my class.  Three cheers for efficiency! 

My grad school experience and the role of the graduate certificate

Every so often I take a moment to feel grateful about the way that all of my experiences in the doctorate program (teaching, coordinating, mentoring, research, taking classes inside and outside of my department, presenting at conferences, service and workshop etc.) complement and sometimes contrast.

My philosophy on education parallels in a lot of ways my philosophy in life.  We are here to learn as much as we can and to constantly improve. For this reason, I am always pushing myself to expand upon my knowledge which is why I decided to complement the studies within my program with the certificate in online instruction through the School of Education.  Regardless of how it may or may not impact future job prospects for me, I am incredibly grateful for the exposure to new methodologies and practices, opportunities for reflection and growth, and most of all to the thoughts and opinions of so many individuals with varied backgrounds and experiences.

Reflections on the nature of instruction

After posting in our class discussion on the nature of social media and Web 2.0 and if they are about the configuration and distribution of information and/or instruction, I found myself after years and years of providing instruction of various types and in various formats, questioning my own definition of instruction.

Have you ever felt like you know something so well and so intimately that you can't even define it, and if you could, you might not want to say it out loud for fear that someone would question you, debate you or debunk your theory?  After being involved in educational work in so many capacities, I feel like I have a deeply ingrained concept of what is instruction.  Almost like I am shouting to the world: go ahead, test me! Ask me about something and I can definitely tell you if that is instruction or not; but don't you dare ask me to define it.

Part of my personal view of instruction has always consisted of a rejection of the Atlas Complex (my apologies, I couldn't find a citation).  If you haven't heard of it, here is my take on it.  It reflects the "old-school" ways of teaching: where the responsibility of learning falls on the teachers' shoulders, the students are empty vessels just waiting for the knowledge the all-knowing teacher imparts on them, the class style is generally lecture based etc.  So instruction for me takes on many of the opposite components: collaboration, hands-on work, contribution, multiple resources and approaches to everything.  But I think the that the key for me on instruction is some type of intentionality and design.  Even if within the design, there is the possibility for going off-script to provide movements where spontaneous instruction occurs, there is an overall design.

Well, this was a good first step.  I have now settled on one component that I find essential to instruction.  I can add to that that their must be at least one learner and it looks like we are off to a good start.

Here we go!

So this is just the standard introductory post to my blog, which was created as part of the requirements for one of the courses that I am taking for a graduate certificate in online instruction through FSU.  The course is EME6414 Web 2.0-based Learning and Performance.

My expectations for what you might come to see here on this blog include:

• general reflections and processing on the course
• commentary on my adaptation to new tools and further/deeper exploration of some tools that I am already familiar with
• ideas and thoughts on incorporation of these resources into language teaching
• observed strengths and limitations of online tools/resources
• articles/stories that relate to this class
• lists of resources encountered

I think it will be interesting to reflect back on this list after a little over a month to see where I was on track and which areas I may have been off-point on!

Hope you enjoy!