Things have certainly been hectic here since the semester started on Monday 4th August. As I write I am midway through the third week and have covered an enormous amount of material with my students, including an introduction, their final project, the two world wars and the cold war.
I have had a wonderful amount of energy and enthusiasm lately despite the demands of work, and with the final project of my students now online, where they have to produce a small video analysis of two articles from a selected international publication each week, it is amazingly convenient to track their work. To do that I have designed and now maintain a central page – http://www.netvibes.com/johnread
This allows me to present deadlines through a countdown, send messages and make a to-do list, as well as maintain RSS feeds to students’ youtube channels, and a direct link to the NEW class blog at http://escenariosregionales2008.blogspot.com
Finally, students conduct weekly participation and an extension of class activities on their own class “wiki” – addressed as http://escenarios1.wetpaint.com (change the number to 2, 3, 4, or 51 for the other groups) The wikis can all be designed by the students in each group and it was my intention that they completely control how the wikis develop. I am able to track participation through the netvibes page or the wiki itself, where an RSS feed tells me who did what when, and provides direct links.
Welcome to Web 2.0!
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