Wikified Notes

I'm trying (again) to integrate wikis into my teaching- using them in conjunction with Blackboard. Our recent upgrade left Blackboard sessions that don't fully load without crashing (some conflict with the current version of the JRE, I'm guessing), meaning that I'm splitting the content between the confidential / copyrighted / student-specific materials that have to go on a secured site (i.e. BB) and my lecture notes, which I've made public.

I'm not sure if it's more confusing or less for the students. I just have a bunch of tabs open at the same time and go to the appropriate one, though some users are more likely to plunge through sites more linearly, descending from link to link.

Will stay tuned to see how it works. As far as I'm concerned, giving out lecture notes on top of slides and the aforementioned lectures is just a bonus.

Playing with chalk

"How come there is always enough money for wars but never enough for health, education and the environment? " I just thought I'd let my head swirl around that comment for a few minutes.

I just finished lecturing the class about "green computing". Do I have enough time to talk about the environmental and human costs of technology and computing? No. Can I give a balanced view in 20 minutes? I tried. But the conversation turns back to hardware- how much a 1TB drive costs at Best Buy, stuff like that. Then there are the looks of surprise when I mention that the circuit boards that technology is mounted to is made by bathing the stuff in sulfuric acid, not to mention other unfriendly chemicals.

But I blanked out when trying to remember the exponent of 2 that equals a megabyte of data. And some other exponents. Then I've worn through all the chalk I have on hand. It's a long day.

Off to my last lecture before going home.