Thoughts on Tech Today. Post #1

I'm a luddite. Computers scare the @#$$!! out of me. Not as much as they do some other people I know, but nonetheless, anything beyond word processing, going to the internet, and emailing (which I have managed to mess up on more than one occasion), leaves me with a feeling of dread. How many ways can I screw up what I am doing, and then have no idea what I've done and how to undo it. I'm the guy who refers to the finder as the two little faces.

This said, I have, however reluctantly, stepped into the 21st century. I have a rudimentary web page for my long term classes, which I can and need to do more on. I have been using a blog for my seminar class and for two of my short term classes. I know how to create links to articles on the web and to videos on You Tube. And I've been very happy with this. In the past I have used journals for classes, which led to my taking home boxes of notebooks. Now I use the blog as a journal on which students very publicly react and respond to the texts and discussions in the class. This is immediate: it's easy to see who has done what and when. And it allows for furthering of discussion and the creation of new discussions that can be taken up in class.

I'm not convinced yet about the other uses of the technology I've just read about. A wicki? Maybe as I find out about it more I can see using one. I'm a luddite, remember? I didn't buy a CD player for years. The text is still the thing in my class -- the book, the movie. I'm open to being shown ways I can grapple with these through technology.