Students

Blogging as Teaching Tool

As my students are doing this semester, I will be using this space to explore blogging as a method of in-depth issue exploration, analysis, and data synthesis.  I’m scared to go public with my thoughts and ideas–but since I’m asking my students to go public–!! My exploration seeks to uncover some significant teaching affordances related to blogging, particularly as a method for research, remembrance, reflection, and renewal.  My colleague, Dr. Stacia Dunn Campbell, suggested I explore how blogs provide a place of transferability and sustainability, and I agree with her that blogs do allow for those affordances, so they, too, will be part of my exploratory journey.

Students will use their blogs as sites of creation and reflection.  Not only will they analyze their research and publish their thoughts about course reading assignments, they will also undertake a thoughtful exploration of issues that interest them.  They will seek other bloggers and micro-bloggers who are writing about specific issues and learn how to join a community of experts and scholars seeking to shed light on the important problems of our day.

This is our beginning . . .

My Hope for My Students

Here, at the beginning of this semester, my hope for my students is that they begin to feel the urgent need to learn, not only their academic content, but more about national and global issues.   I hope the use of Twitter in the classroom helps to connect them to the BBC, CNN, The Daily Show, and other news outlets.   My intent is to use Twitter to engage them in the world of ideas and connect them to the key people discussing those ideas–so that my students actively participate in the conversations that will define their futures. 

ASE 1111 Students

My new ASE 1111 students are awesome, and I am amazed at how industrious and hard-working they are!  Six of them work 15 to 40 hours a week.  Seven of them commute–some commute from as far away as Plano!  All of them mentioned wanting to make great grades and make new friends—GO FOR IT!   And, six of them mentioned they chose Texas Wesleyan University because it was smaller and gave them access to their professors–   My guess is that YOU will all have a fabulous semester!