Barbara Ganley has often described the first few weeks of the semester (for her students) as a bit of a free fall. I fear the same is true for my students this semester. In one fell swoop I have declared that there will be no textbook, that their main mode of communicating and practicing the language will be through their class-specific blogs, that they will get a loaner iPod and iTalk microphone to record themselves and others and then be asked to post those sound files to their blogs… and oh, another thing? Conscencus rules in this class. If the majority of the people in the class feel that a shift in what we are studying or how we are studying it has to happen, then a shift will happen.
First the technology:
Using the Emergence Model for teaching:
