I've been debating starting this blog for several months now. I don't know why it's been such an issue for me since I know I'll be the only one reading it. I finally decided I just need to commit these ideas to words and sentences.
First of all www.indianachemmod.com is coming along. S-l-o-w-l-y. The more I work on the site the more ideas I have and the more overwhelming it becomes. As of today, we have the goals for each unit up. The first unit has all the files linked and discussion forums have been created. We still need to tweak the interface a bit. I need to become more comfortable with Moodle 2.0+ as I only use 1.9+ at school.
Cory has been working on the logo for the site. It's not quite finished, as he is a perfectionist and keeps tweaking it.
Speaking of perfectionists - I need to look into how to modify and upload themes to blogger, upload fonts, and link this blog to the chemmod website. Hmmm, that should be an interesting adventure.
I'm currently winding down my twelfth year of teaching. I'm wrapping up the second year in the modeling curriculum with a unit on Acids and Bases and Periodicity. The Acid/Base unit will be a challenge since it isn't available on the ASU website and I only have the materials made available during the workshop last summer. I'm adding on to some activities Bill T. and Laura S. use in their classrooms. It will be more time intensive than the other units since I don't have good teacher notes to work from. I feel I should be concluding my advanced class as well, because the national AP exam is May 8, but I'm also teaching the class for Indiana University so I get the luxury of an additional month of instruction in that class. I will be teaching transition metal chemistry for the first time in my career.
Well, here's to finally digging into this endeavor. Hopefully blogging will help me focus on improving my instructional model. Even if I'm only talking to myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment