cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by jurvetson The first day of action for my online section of ds106 could not have been more impressive. A lengthly email went out last night, and as of a little over 24 hours later, 19 out of 25 of my students registered their domains, and most of them from what I have seen have installed WordPress. As a matter of reference, last Spring, when UMW students had to buy their own domains and then set up there oen web hosting, it took three weeks to get to a similar number. This has a lot to do with the genius and energy of Tim Owens who devices and is running the Domain of One’s Own project. From what I see, already 14 of my 25 students set up their twitter account, and they jumped right in (I am keeping a twitter list ...

cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Danforth1 My section of ds106 starts tomorrow, I am teaching a section completely online. I just realized I never reflected much on the summer experience, wich was the first time doing it online. The summer version is even more different, because we have room to play with a narrative for the course. The irony here is I once questioned the need for a narrative which only goes to show the power of blogging and changing your mind later. It is also timely to be doing this since I am part of another open online class, the Program for Online Teaching Certificate Class (“POTCERT dude”)– I am taking on this because I want to become a better online teacher. I have to say after the Spring semester teaching the class in person, I thought it made more sense to be ...

Oi, somehow I never published this post, my own answer to my own challenge. I just found it in my unpublished drafts drawer. Bad Dog. The first rule of issuing challenges is be prepared to remix your own dog food. Thus I find myself tonight working at doing my own creation for the Seven Day Daily Create Challenge. You can see the whole series of related posts at http://cogdogblog.com/tag/7daychallengetdc Okay, this is not easy. I scanned the 174 entries that came in (actually there are more now than when I summarized), and downloaded enough media I could use (I had to skip a few flickr photos that were not creative common licensed and some audio that were not set in SoundCloud to be downloaded). A theme somewhat emerged, like something bad that might happen if a flame was turned on somewhere in the world, that triggered a few catastrophic events… ...

This video is really meant as an introduction to students in my online section of ds106 at University of Mary Washington; I agree its critical early on to help create a sense of identity for all participants in the class. While this class is online, all of my students are there in Fredericksburg… but I am not. If you are one of my students, do not be scared. No, be a little scared. You should know that I have been doing online web stuff since 1993 (here is one of my early teaching sites) and have been involved in technology and education now for 20 years. That makes me old. I have always used a dog as my icon and metaphor; that brown lab was a real and dear dog of mine named Mickey. I got very interested in ds106 in the Spring of 2011 when it was first done ...

On today’s drive across a large swath of Virginia, I was listening to some episode of a new radio show The Truth. With production quality along the lines of This American Life I am thinking it has good examples for ds106 students to learn the qualities of good audio storytelling (use of music, sound effects, tight editing, good writing). The shows really draw you in to the story; I heard today Eat Cake where a couple meets in the most unlikely way (a cold phone call to a stranger on Valentines day), and the transference and augmentation of interaction passed bu the participants in Interruptible. These radio shows are dramatic fiction- the site bills itself as “Movies for Your Ears”. But the episode I heard today on Movie Mashups was a bit different and the host described it as not their typical show: but on listening, I had that reflex ...