Notes of a New Professor

Carol, one of my friends “back home,” has been *reminding* me to start blogging again. So, Carol. Here it is. The first post in my new blog. I hope you’re not too disappointed.

After 20 years in the public schools, a trip through a doctoral program, several stints of adjunct teaching, I’m now an Asst. Professor. We’re starting a new Master of Education program and our first cohort of students will be arriving in just under two weeks. It’s an accelerated program and will focus on the Teacher as Leader in Curriculum and Instruction. The program will be delivered in hybrid format, but is heavily online.

I’ve been busy developing the first course, Teacher As Leader. The course content is on the open web although the students will be seeing it through the lens of Desire2Learn which, I hope, explains its rather spare appearance. Inside Desire2Learn, I’ve been fiddling and tweaking the course home page. I wanted to make it a warm and welcoming place but there’s only so much one can do. As I was doing an Internet search for one of the things I had in mind, I found a blog post by Laura Gibbs (online instructor at Oklahoma University) in which she talked about “Decorating the Walls.” It resonated with me because that’s exactly what I had been doing! So, I took a few hints from her and added a few more widgets than I already had.

So, Carol. Here’s the front door of my classroom and you can see a hints of what will be happening in it here. My plan is to have my students blog, too. Please stay tuned.