first day of school

Not a lot to report. Completed one (of three) section of ENG105. My first time teaching in a computer lab, but I'm excited about adding technology to my courses, so it makes sense to have this kind of access. I asked the students to indicate on their questionnaires if they blog--only two out of twenty do, so for most of them this will be an entirely new experience.

I've already caught the start-of-semester-cold, which made it rough to talk at length today, but with three-quarters of the class new to college, I wanted to be particularly thorough in my explanation(s).

I still think wordpress was a solid choice for student blogging, but I'm having my own difficulties with it in that it won't really allow me use code or HTML of any sort. It will only allow me to modify and create using its tools, so I'm having trouble embedding google calendar into my sidebar. I've created the class schedule for the year at google calendar so that they'll have an online version that they can access. For now I've provided links on a separate page. I also need to figure out the best way of posting PDF files.

On Wednesday and Thursday I'll be assigning the students to set-up their wordpress blogs, so I'll have more of an update then.

Tonight it is all exhaustion...and it is deceivingly hot outside, but still I have Dar Williams' "End of the Summer" in my head. It seems that every year at this time I walk around humming this song to myself (hopefully just myself):

The summer ends and we wonder where we are
And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car
And you both look so young
And last night was hard, you said
You packed up every room
And then you cried and went to bed
But today you closed the door and said
"We have to get a move on.
It's just that time of year when we push ourselves ahead,
We push ourselves ahead."