Well, I think things are getting more comfortable for me and for students about the class. Good humor and cooperation all around. They haven't really broken a sweat yet, so today's test will break things down more. I suspect that there is a perception that this course can be handled on the fly, an easy course to mix into a last semester. Clearly many have not been keeping up well with the reading but have pushed hard to get ready for today. I guess that is the way things have to work.

Some fun with the doing the Internet timeline. Spirit of the students is positive and encouraging. Things have been slow but now we seem to have enough foundation and common knowledge that we can dig into things. It's impressive how extensive their background knowledge is anyway, as individuals and as a group.
Some unevenness with the presentations. These are still going through a shake-down cruise but I am confident that we will iron out the bugs. It's all good.

Recently have had more discussions and interactions during class. It's a quiet group of individuals, generally, and I need to be more comfortable, more accepting and respectful of that. Partially we need more juicy content to process. Much has been learning facts and not enough exploring the controversies and contradictions. I see this coming, though, and am eager to kick this around more.

I am having trouble keeping up with this blog. I wonder if that means anything. I am distracted by difficulties of my other classes. By and large things seem fine with this course. I was very disappointed with the first round of presentations but think that we learned from that and have moved on.
It seems as this part of the course is moving slow, to me. I am more interested in the less technical dimensions but believe we should spend time on this up front. Since it is less engaging to me then I guess I preceive it as "slow." Oh well.

The first presentations are today. The student interest and energy looks great. I am really looking forward to them. I am worried about how the projector chops off the side of powerpoint presentations and will try to look into that before class begins.
Also the contributions to discussion board are interesting. I learned some new things.

Feeling pretty good about things now. the poor students have had to endure me babbling at them alot. But that's often what is need to lift a course off the ground. I feel good energy and interest from them. However, things will get more interesting as we get into student presentations next week. I am looking forward to this so that the course will be more interactive and collaborative.