Will’s Similiblog

newest member of my family:

Rosie is an example of the very best that can come out of online education -

I recently completed Terence Armentano’s course on Online Teaching (taught, of course, online), through Bowling Green State University - and there met Becky Henry (in a vitual way). Becky’s Golden Retriever had recently had a litter of puppies - and - to shorten a long story - one has come to live with us :^).

Rosie is a “Berntriever” or “Golden Mountain Dog” - a Golden Retriever mom, & Bernese Mountain Dog dad. She is as adorable as they come.

Oh yeah - the course was great too; I highly recommend it.

I’ve been developing a community blogging platform for my institution, a postgraduate college of ~500 students. We’ve been successfully employing Moodle as a learning management system built around individual course offerings, but wish to extend the functionality of this with a platform to support integration of learning across course offerings, permitting student journaling, community discussion, and lodging of ‘learning artifacts’ both for individuals and for sharing within the learning community.

We’re constrained by cost (budget = $0 plus or minus a few bucks); by having a population of students somewhat older than the demographic to which web-savvyness comes by default; and by having a faculty with only a few potential early-adopters of digital technology.

My vision for this platform, includes:

• a journaling/blogging component, permitting public student journaling, with the option of private journaling;
• the ability to create sub-groups orbital to the full community;
• some form of portfolio development for students, with the possibility of archiving both private and public ‘learning artifacts’
• the expressed desire of constituents to restrict access to our institutional/learning community

I’ll detail in upcoming posts the construction of our site, which is now in beta-user testing status, and readying for limited launch at the start of spring term in April.

Just giving birth to this blog -
the rotating header images are:

• Stone arch in an old castle ruin, near Snezne, Moravia
• Steps up from the Black Sea to a Roman fortress, north of Varna, Bulgaria
• Ridge trail on the summit of Črna prst, near Bohinjska Bistrica, Slovenja
• Alpine dairy at Planina Viševnik, near Stara Fužina, Slovenja
• Purple geranium (¿sylvaticum?); on the summit of Pršivec, Slovenjan alps, near Stara Fužina
• White avalanche lily; on the McNeil Point trail, western slope of Mt. Hood, Oregon
• The Pražský orloj (astrological clock), Old Town Square, Prague, Czech Republic
• Mount Ranier (Washington), from Mt. Adams
• A little rock garden on Planina Viševnik, near Stara Fužina, Slovenja
• Summit of Untersberg, lost in fog; near Salzburg, Austria
• a low ridge with autumn foliage, on Untersberg, near Salzburg, Austria
• the Spišský hrad (castle), Spissky Podhradie, Slovakia (2 images)
• a little housed spring near Rejvíz, Silesia (Czech Republic)
• train south of the Vysoké Tatry, Slovakia
• my dog, Molly
• Rhododendron macrophyllum; in Bull of the Woods wilderness area, Oregon
• view of Rodica, en route from Črna prst to Vogel; near Bohinjska Bistrica, Slovenja
• rainbow at Sedlec-Prcice, Moravian Highlands (Czech Republic)
• Skopelos, in the Greek Aegean
• along the South Kaibab trail, in the Grand Canyon, Arizona