Back to School!

The fall semester started on Monday. My first week went very well. This is the first time I have taught 5 days a week, and also multiple classes in a semester. I was afraid of feeling a bit overwhelmed after the first week, but I surprising don't - instead I'm highly motivated and pumped up. A couple notes of new things that worked this week:

• Spent a good 30 minutes discussing email etiquette in Intro to Computers. This was an excellent idea.


• Minimizing lecture on the basics and having a full out discussion. Wrapping class up with a mini 10 minute lecture. I liked this format, and the students seemed more engaged.


• Make email policy clear on the first day: I will not answer emails after 10:00 on weeknights, and rarely on weekends. This makes teaching a day and weekday job, not a 24/7 job.


• Clearly describe the objectives and how we will meet them each semester.


• Establish classroom norms.

In other news, to celebrate a good first week, I bought some new pants. I LOVE the Express editor pants, but they are just too expensive. I went to Express yesterday, tried on probably around 30 pairs of pants, and then decided on the wide waistband in gray and a light pinstripe. I liked the regular editors, but they just didn't want to fit quite right - either they were too short, too long, too tight, or too loose. They needed 1/2 sizes in pants I think.

I did finish taking off the wallpaper in the office. I haven't done anything since. I'm decided if I want to paint the bottom half blue and leave the top half white while adding some sort of wood divider, or all blue. I appreciate any reader suggestions. The room is a huge mess right now because everything is piled in the center of the room.

I'm currently working on researching computer mediated communication in relation to online courses. I've compiled several articles and books. The reading part is fun. This week I'm moving into the more unfun part: organizing information into presentational and paper form. I'm presenting this as a training session on September 8, and hope to submit to Central States to present in April also.

Hopefully I'll have something more interesting to blog about next week.