I really love this time of year on a college campus. No matter what my age, the beginning of classes brings the same excitement year after year. I hope students share this excitement. Those of us in this environment have the luxury of focusing on our own improvement for an extended period of time and this opportunity should be appreciated.
David Warlick raised the question about our ability to relate to new students in an interesting way and one that seems to have generated a wide variety of comments and related posts. His daughter (if I remember the post correctly) is taking several Methods courses and he recommended that she wait until the end of the opening remarks – the time when the prof asks if there are any questions – and then:
Would suggest that someone ask,
“What blogs do you read?”
If the instructor stammers or in any other way answers in the
unknowing or the untrusting, then there’s opportunity for everyone in
this class to learn.Of course, you do not want to be the one who asked the question that
the instructor couldn’t answer — especially if it might seem, in any
way, loaded. So immediately ask what journals he or she reads. Save
face!
To save students from my class the trouble – here is my feed. My list is not very long – in contrast my wife who reviews approx. a hundred feeds. We take a little different approach. She reads more and I write more (this our own version of the Read/Write web). I would also probably not be able to remember the names of the blogs I read or in most cases the individuals who generate the content. As Warlick suggests, I would be more specific regarding the journals I follow. I find blogs stimulating, but I read the journals for the more data oriented approach I need to balance the observations and opinions.
I am not sure it matters what the source is as long as one has a regular flow of inputs (quality ideas from a variety of sources) and one takes the time to think about these inputs.
Rather than ask about blogs, I think my questions of students would be “What is the last nonfiction book you read?” “What was the last trip you took that changed the way you think about the world?”
Blogged with Flock
