Students and the Blog?

Well, this spring I experimented with using a blog in my Russian history courses as opposed to the usual course-management-system discussion forums. The results were not much different than what I experienced with the forums, i.e., mixed student participation. On the plus side, the blog allowed me to offer some "spur-of-the-moment" thoughts to students as they were progressing through the course; the blog also allowed me to comment on current events in Russia that I normally would not have been able to bring to the attention of the students. On the negative side, the learning curve (however small it may have been) was a bit much for some students to handle. In addition, when students did choose to comment or post, their contributions were not always solid contributions. I think the next time that I try this, each student will have their own blog, and I'll use it as more of a reflective instrument for students to comment as they work through the course material. I think that kind of use would also work well with some kind of portfolio project.

Using Video

Just finished some training in Adobe's Premier CS3--I needed it since this new upgrade was much different than my old Premier 6.1 software. I'm hoping to get started on some short videos for my online classes, but haven't decided whether to shoot with my mini-dv camera or my logitech webcam. I think that these will end up in Flash format. Also have some home video projects to attend to this summer.