July 28, 2008
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Okay, so on Sunday, I wrote about being overwhelmed… hoping to work smarter, not harder in prepping for the fall semester. And I think I’ve gotten a good start. First, I copied and pasted the expanded list of items that are already in each week/unit of the English 110 eCompanion shell. Then, I color-coded each unit. Since I’m skimming down from 16 weeks of stuff into 7 units (adding more items/work/ideas into a smaller space), I started noting which things would have to move from, say, Week 16 to Unit 7 now (like the Course Reflection and the Shortfolio, etc.).
I also started joting down what to add to these new units as well. Originally, the course had 2 papers, 1 big project, the Shortfolio, a test, and various other activities. I’m picking out the seven project/papers/activities I really like/want to beef up. So, now I have a Paper 1 (smaller at 500 words), a Paper 2 (same size as before), P3 is a visual analysis contest, P4 is the Geeky Knowledge Lesson Presentation (used to be a smaller activity), P5 is the PPT MusicVideo, P6 is the last Paper, and then P7 is the Shortfolio. Now the course revolves around units devoted to each main graded item; before, it was set up around weeks (and we teachers know how often weeks change – caused a lot of revising for me as the course progressed).
Essentially, I’m planning out what will have to move/be revised before I even open up that eCompanion shell and get overwhelmed by just looking at the contents. We’ll see if it makes things easier. I guess after creating this plan, I should decide whether to move items first to their new units or revise… I’m guessing having the units situated with the correct items first is the way to go.
