POW award for last week

By my count, Chris Shanks's post had the most nominations: 3 votes. You can see it here
There were many good, interesting posts. Thank you all for writing so thoughtfully about the Confessions.

For next week, please post twice as usual, but since we don't have a "text" please post about your experiences with writing and creating your digital story.

Augustine, Curiosity and God

We have talked about Augustine's restlessness. We wonder "Why is he so restless? Why does he keep seeking, changing, moving, questioning?

Watch this video. It is not long, but it is very important that you see the end. What do you think it means? would Augustine agree? Are we essentially seekers all of our lives?

fighting the quicksand...

Do you ever have those dreams where you are trying to run, but you can only go in slow motion? That is how I felt in class Friday! For some people, that kind of hands on set up time is crucial; for others, it is boring. My hope is that you will help each other whenever you can, and be patient--which you were, so thank you.

Have you tried setting up any other rss feeds in your Google Reader?

For the week coming up: make sure you have looked at the new pages on Blackboard about the digital storytelling project. On Wednesday, you will turn in a draft of your 500 word story so I can give you a little feedback.

Tomorrow we will dig in to Augustine's Confessions up through Book 8 (or as far as we can get--I know it is a lot.) I was rereading the part on the death of his friend and his experience of grief earlier today and found it even more poignant than I remembered.

I had spilt my soul upon the sand, in loving a mortal man as if he were never to die... (62)

For where was my heart to flee for refuge from my heart? Wither was I to fly from myself? To what place should I not follow myself? Yet leave my native place I did. For my eyes would look for him less where they had not been accustomed to see him

It doesn't get much sadder than that. Older Augustine, writing and looking back finds comfort in faith:

"Blessed is the man that loves Thee, O God, and his friend in Thee, and his enemy for Thee. For he alone loses no one that is dear to him, if all are dear in God, who is never lost (63)."

since we are talking about blogging...

Here is a nice video about the what and how of blogs. Do you think it is a good description?

Happy New Semester!

I have been thinking a lot about what I want to change and improve for this semester. I just reread your end of class reflections/suggestions and I thought I would give you a sense of what your peers said.

Two messages came through loud and clear: you like small group work and discussions, and you weren't totally happy with the way we did the blog writing.
SO-I will keep using small group discussions as a part of our class. The one frustration that several of you mentioned was that the class is short, so many times there are goups who don't get to report back to the large group. I know that is frustrating. I have some ideas about how we might deal with that:
1. maybe we could have a wiki where group comments are written during class, with one person every day bringing a laptop for this purpose. I wonder if there might be ways we could then use the information stored in the wiki?
2. I can try to give groups a chance to do a quick report and then we can go back and go in depth. I kind of tried to do that last semester, but wasn't so successful at it... One way might be to have 2 groups to each topic, and then the groups would have a few minutes to synthesize their comments and report out after that. I'll think about that some more.
3. do you have any thoughts?

Blogs: you seem to want to post less frequently and/or to bring the blog writings into class more. I think this means that not all of you found the blogs to be as useful for personal reflections on the texts and for making connections on your own. No--I think that is not accurate. I think maybe what you mean is that the blogging felt like a lot of work, and you didn't see how it counted much in the grade. (Although--it did, as part of that blog paper which really helped the grades of many people--have your opinions changed about that since you did the reflection paper?)

Many of you said that you would like to perhaps have 3 required blog entries per week, due 24 hours or so before class, and that would then be used in class. It does seem to me that the writing is a useful way for people to get prepared for class. YOu could write about the topic that is your group's topic, but then some of that nice freedom to explore on your own is lost...hmmmm...

So I am working on redoing the grading scheme for this semester. You will see that the generic Core syllabus is up, but I am still playing with the grading and assignment specifics for our class. If you have any thoughts, concerns, suggestions, leave a comment here or email me directly.
Looking forward to seeing you soon!