Warming / Pruning / Teaching

Today was the first day of sprig I came to work without a sweater or sweatshirt. And short sleeves too!

I neglected to mention, when talking about pruning rosebushes, that in my mind, trimming and pruning are two separate things. Getting some shape, eliminating hodgepodge growth, deadheading, and keeping things in control are all trimming. Cutting back for the winter, removing a significant number of vines at their base, and removing large amounts of material are pruning.

Just wanted to clear that up.

And finally...it's week 9 of our 10 week quarter, and I am almost finished teaching my first ever class. I had the extremely unpleasant experience of realizing that the last 3 weeks' readings have been a little mixed up. At the beginning of the term, we got the first 6 weeks' worth of outline complete, and then said, 'OK, now we can get started. Once things are settled down we can finalize the second half of the course.' Then I completely forgot about it. I knew something was missing in the Race Class and Gender week.

So I apologized to the students yesterday, and told them why, if things seemed a little illogical over the previous 3 weeks, it was completely my fault. They seemed extremely amused.

I've already started de-compressing from the experience. Mostly I want to write things down so that I don't repeat mistakes. Many things worked very well--like yesterday's live chat session. (In retrospect though, I should not have used the Eugene gay chat room--there's too high a probability of running into someone you know.) But it was remarkable: out of the 10 people in the room, 4 almost instantly opened private chat windows. (I could almost imagine the cries of 'fresh meat!') One almost immediately propositioned me. Another seemed to want a conversation. After a little bit of exchange, I admitted to being in a class and having his conversation projected on a screen. He didn't freak out, and chatted with the class (via me) a bit.

So OK, I know there might be ethical problems with doing what we did--but I think it was an overwhelmingly positive experience for the students. They seemed entranced. Moreso than any other demo I've done this year.

The VR demo worked pretty well last week (2 weeks ago?) as well. Getting them to try it was a bit more difficult, but that was a technical problem. Downloading clients before class and making sure they run should solve that problem.

If there is a next time, I think I would eliminate the 1 topic per week model. There were, perhaps, 3 broad themes that emerged from the class: What is information and how is it organized online? How is this different from how it's been done in the physical world? How do people interact with it online? Oddly, a spatial metaphor carries through all of the themes, so perhaps the class could be renamed 'Geographies of cyberspace' and offered through the geography department.

More debriefing to come. Or maybe it will happen offline. I'm not sure what's most appropriate anymore. There certainly is something to be said for online document management when one sits at 3 different computers everyday (and carries a 4th in one's pocket. When is Blogger going to offer a handheld interface?).