Blog Power and Other Things

It's been a good day for Blog Power...

One of my fellow faculty members has just been selected to attend Microsoft's Tech Ed 2007 conference June 4-8 in Orlando. While attending a conference is not that unusual, the manner in which he has chosen to report on the conference is. He plans to blog and use wikis to keep us all up to date on his preparation, attendance, participation, and after action. This is not new in the world of the blogosphere, but is pretty new to us - very cool. I think it will have a major impact on things here at NSCC.

Robert Talbert is an associate professor of mathematics and computing science at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest who writes the Casting Out Nines blog. He has a recent post "Escaping Textbooks" that is near and dear to my heart. He is in the process of developing a textbook-free course in Modern Algebra and already has a textbook-free problem-solving course which intrigues me as I also teach a Logic and Problem-Solving course. More importantly he will be blogging his course development process. I'm really looking forward to following along.

One of my students read my earlier post about not using textbooks "My Next Textbook - Google Notebook", and has decided to create a Google Notebook of common Visual Basic syntax and structures that he will share with his fellow classmates. Very cool.

I'm now exploring the use of Google Groups as a collaborative learning space/resource repository and will be running all of my courses this Fall using blogs, wikis, and other Web 2.0 tools to support learning and foster engagement. I have been greatly encouraged to do this by the generosity of other travellers in the blogosphere as they share their educational experiences through their own posts.

All in all, a VERY good day for Blog Power...