¡Ahi vamos! (Here we go!)

I just returned from a week in Puerto Rico and can now turn more attention to the online teaching institute. (I am also re-adjusting to the cold temperatures and English-only environment). I appreciate the opportunity to experience this institute as a student would, including being required to use formats that I would not naturally use, such as this one.

The purpose of the PR trip was to get together with collaborators on our NSF grant project to work on case study development, software debugging, and assessment. Two of the team members are at Interamerican University in PR, and it was about the same amount of travel costs to meet there vs. River Falls. Hmmm... River Falls or Puerto Rico in January? Talk about a no-brainer.

It is interesting in this context that our grant group feels the need to get together in person occasionally to complete our work. We have regular Skype conferences and use email for most of our communication, and recently set up a wiki to share resources. We experimented briefly with a blog on this site, but it does not work well unless everyone checks it frequently. We have found that we get so much more accomplished if we spend a few days together where we can bounce ideas off of each other and get instant feedback. I think there are similar issues with the classroom environment - all of the in-person interactions that facilitate learning cannot be replicated online. But the online tools can extend learning in different ways not possible in the constraints of a 3 hour/week class meeting, and I am looking forward to learning how to implement these more effectively.

Más tarde...

P.S. The profile picture is in honor of the Simpsons' 20th anniversary (hey, it works for Google)