There’s a great (but so far, small) discussion about ways to improve the Intro to Open Ed course going on over on the wiki. There are a lot of fabulous ideas, some of which are difficult to implement in the middle of a course. However, there is one idea that we can and absolutely should implement. Megan suggests: I think it would be an improvement to have one week where we have readings and comments on our own, and the following week where we comment on others work. Gives me a chance to form my own ideas and questions, and then have feedback. ...

So recently I was “berated” (and rightly so) by one of the 50 or so people following my Introduction to Open Education course (not for credit) because a few weeks had passed since I had commented on their blog posts. I admit I have been focusing my reading / responding efforts on the few people signed up for credit, but s/he was right - I need to redouble my efforts and respond to all the stuff everyone is doing. A few weeks ago I changed my first few weeks’ practice of posting highlights here to posting comments directly on people’s blogs. However, there have been several votes for bringing back the highlights here. So, that’s what I’m doing! Here’s some of what I’ve seen and thought recently. ...

Alessandro blogged tonight about the same frustration many of us (myself included) are feeling with regard to the Intro to Open Ed course. Alessandro’s frustrated that I haven’t been providing as much feedback as might be desired. I have to agree. With about 60 students following the course, I could easily spend all day every day responding to what you are all writing and still not keep up. There is really amazing thinking and writing happening “out there,” and I love reading it and engaging with it. As you may guess, though, I’m making sure to give feedback and additional prompts to the students who are registered for credit first, and then reading as much of the rest of your work when I can, and commenting when possible. ...

I love Stephen Downes. Even though I can’t understand what he’s been saying to me for the last year, he still pushes me around mentally and makes me think and write. You simply have to love someone who does that for you. Commenting on Jennifer’s blog, Stephen asks: ...

Ok, I know I’m too much of a geek for my own good, but this open course about Problem Solving on Large Scale Clusters looked pretty interesting, until I saw the description for Lab 3, at which point it became too interesting: Lab 3. The Goal – Implement PageRank, turn Wikipedia into a giant graph, run PageRank on said graph, run it several more times (ideally until the values converge), return (in a humanly parseable sort of way) the PageRank of all the articles. ...

A rare Sunday post for me. Today in the semi-annual LDS General Conference, Elder Oaks quoted research from a recent study at Columbia’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse about the relationship between teens’ academic achievement and how frequently they eat dinner with their family. BusinessWeek summarized the findings as follows: Their research has found that children who have a regular family mealtime are less likely to smoke, drink, use illegal drugs, experiment with sex at a young age, and get into fights. Further, these children are at lower risk for suicidal thoughts and are more likely to do better in school. Teens that have frequent family dinners are more likely to be emotionally content, to work harder, to have positive peer relationships, and to have healthier eating habits. Family mealtime is the single strongest predictor of academic achievement scores and low rates of behavioral problems, regardless of race, gender, education, age of parents, income, or family size. ...

Last week’s Open Education 2007 was one of the best conferences ever, no questions asked! During the conference, we used an amazing piece of technology called 51Weeks to capture everything going on… Slides, audio, back-channel web-based chats per session, etc. In fact, audio from every single session was online 10 minutes after the session ended. If you didn’t get to attend but would like to listen to the audio, read the slides, and read the web-based chats associated with each session, bop on over to http://51weeks.com/events/3. And if you’re interested in using 51Weeks to support your conference, let me know! (AECT, anyone?)

Logan’s newspaper, The Herald Journal, has been doing top 10 lists this summer. On September 8 HJ writer Kim Burgess did a back-to-school top 10 list of “Classes Every Aggie Should Take,” and I was pleasantly surprised to see my “Blogs, Wikis, and New Media for Learning” on the list. She says: Everyone and his dog has a blog these days. Making yours stand out takes a bit more work…. This course goes over a variety of “web 2.0” technologies including blogs, RSS, wikis, social bookmarking tools, photo sharing tools, mapping tools, audio and video podcasts, and screencasts. You’ll be a YouTube pro by the end of the semester. ...