cvasey.org

The blog for PHIL 151, Introduction to Logic, will have a set of categories, which will look like the table of contents of an introductory logic textbook.  Clicking on the topics will open up “chapters” where they will find things like lecture notes on concepts, exercises for homework, and power point presentations. The blog will also have buttons through which students access their group blogs.

I plan to assign students in sets of four or five to working groups. These students will be talking to each other all semester in a group blog. The group blog will be for collaborative work toward understanding and mastering distinctions, concepts, techniques, and skills. It will be a place where they discuss their opinions about questions or exercises; where they comment on others’ answers to questions or exercises; where they discuss the course content with each other; where they work together to figure out a solution to assigned problems; etc.  For instance, after the first day of class, they will all be assigned to read chapter 6 of Through the Looking Glass, and to comment on what logically relevant distinction Carroll is making by his use of punctuation. They will also be asked to say what Humpty Dumpty’s theory of (proper) names is, and whether they agree with it, and why.  Word limit to this entry: 200. They can comment on others’ entries, but before doing so, each has to compose his or her own response to these questions.

My goals for the course are:

a) at a general level, eliminate the need for and use of a textbook by publishing my own course materials on line; more specifically,

b) develop collaborative learning exercises and assignments that students can participate in through group blogs;

c) develop some software for interactive problem solving (such as truth tables and proofs).

I was playing around with the phil151 blog. Created a few subcategories in one of the categories, and tried to upload a power point about categorical propositions. That didn’t work, so I need to be shown what I did wrong.  I was in “write” and saw the browse button, so I gave it a title, but I can’t find it showing up.

Just spent an hour and a half with Martha, and my head’s been spinning for most of it. But I think I have grasped some things, especially after she showed me how one of my colleagues is using a blog as a website for her class.

First thing we did today was upload, from Bluehost, a spam manager. Once that was found and uploaded (I think it had to be downloaded to my desktop first, then uploaded from there, and I think it was called “spam karma”), we went to the blog and activated it.  Then we did that again for theme managing under “presentation.”  k2 is the theme we installed.

Once I began to understand how the blog was a website that I could have a series of buttons on that would link to what could be units of material for a course (which could be listed down the right hand side, sort of as a table of contents), I asked her to show me how to get started on creating a blog I could start shaping for PHIL151, Intro to Logic.  So now besides cvasey.org/tltblog I have cvasey.org/phil151.  Just as we had installed the spam and theme stuff on my tltblog, we had to go to Bluehost and find them for my phil151 blog.  So I’ve done this four times today, but I don’t know if I can do it without being walked through it again.  I can’t try right now because if I navigate there, I’ll be cancelling what I’m writing. So I will go try it in a minute after I’m done here.

I created a set of categories for the phil151 blog, but they didn’t show up as table of content entries like we expected. So that’s something we have to work on.