Storybook stack. The Storybook stack is still pretty big, but I made a lot of progress on Tuesday! I've been working through the assignments with a focus on those people whose Storybook assignment points will allow them to finish up the class - so if you find yourself in that situation, let me know and I'll move your assignment(s) up to the top of the stack. Meanwhile,
you can check the contents of the stack to make sure I have received your assignment.
Storybook Ballots. (repeat announcement) I've tallied up the nominations that people turned in (thanks to everybody who participated in that part of the process!), and you can see the top nominations for each class here: Storybook Ballot Fall 2009. For each class, you will find the actual ballot for voting in Desire2Learn at the top of the quiz list for Week 14. This is just for fun - not for points or a grade or anything. If you have a few minutes to spare, please vote for your own personal favorites! The ballot will be available till 5PM on Thursday and I'll announce the results Friday. Also, you might enjoy taking a look at some of the nominated Storybooks in the other classes, too - there are so many wonderful creative projects that people have come up with!
Course evaluation at eval.ou.edu. (repeat announcement) You all should have received an email from the College of Arts & Sciences about the course evaluations for all the online courses available at the eval.ou.edu website. The online evaluation is available now. I hope you will take a few minutes to complete the evaluation - your feedback is incredibly helpful to me in making improvements to these courses, and it is also a big help to the College in general as they continue to develop the online course program. The online course program exists because students find it valuable to be able to take courses online, and any ideas you have for how the program can be improved will be very useful to the College as they continue (hopefully!) to offer these online courses.
December 2: Ivan Illich. Today, December 2, marks the anniversary of the death in 2002 of the visionary educator, Ivan Illich. Already back in the 1970s, Illich realized that the personal networks made possible by digital computing could completely change the face of education, so that education could be centered on the learners themselves, rather than forcing learners to conform to the regime of the school (I hope that you can see from the format of my classes that I would love to see a world of learning online but without any traditional schools at all...). I still keep hoping that Illich's vision of "educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring" will someday come true. You can find out more about Ivan Illich's life and work in this wikipedia article, which is also the source of this image:
