I confess...

that Moodle has been a huge help in organizing my classes this fall. Although I have used Moodle for several semesters, but this is the first time I've used it as the focus for everything we are doing. It is a terrific tool for keeping me organized, forcing me to think ahead, and providing a place for students to find all of the course materials in one place. Moodle allows us to have ongoing forums, wikis, chats, personal responses read only by me, and much more. Early responses from students indicate that they appreciate Moodle and enjoy using it as well.

Around the block one more time

I'm eight weeks into a training program for my first half-marathon to be run in Portland (ME) on October 5th. This is a family affair with five of us training and running the half; three of us are first-timers. Feeling strong and fit and enjoying the running more and more. My wife, Connie, and I ran our first double digit day (10 miles) a week ago and it went well...one more 10-miler tomorrow and then taper the rest of the week. More than anything else, I've enjoyed the discipline of the training and proud to say we've not missed one workout in the last two months. Not particularly concerned about my time for the race...just as long as I finish. My question: What do we do now? Continue training? Prepare for another race? Take some time off? I'm afraid to lose the level of fitness I've attained.

Playing with technology

This class is giving me a huge opportunity to connect my burgeoning interest in technology with learning...for learners at any age. I am already enjoying working with undergraduates (whom I have not taught in a number of years) in EDT 400. The trick will be to connect the learning—schools and students for half the class and clients for the other half of the class—and the technology. How do they work together? How much of what we do will also assist our own adult lives as well as our professional lives?

Struggling a bit with the content of this blog and what the focus could or should be. I guess my description on the title page says it all...learning and teaching. Perhaps the technology makes it easier for the learning to take the uppermost hand, because it forces the teaching to be secondary. Can't do too much frontal teaching when the technology forces us to jump in with both feet and simply try things out.

A fall day in Maine

A beautiful day to be sailing, swimming, bike riding...or posting my first blog entry. Looking forward to seeing my students' blogs in EDT 400 to see what they come up with and how they learn to use blogging in their own situations...the K-12 classroom and various iterations of exercise science careers.

For now, it is enough to know that they can use this medium in any number of ways...

And more to come here in the next few hours.