 Generally dry day on Wednesday Approach this yet. It seems like on mass we've all defaulted to we need Presence that presence needs to be video and there still needs to be you know Someone you know disseminating knowledge in the traditional way so that we can say that the charade is going on I was expected and I really appreciated that the other thing I really appreciated and I will let you talk I promise is the idea that you know You've designed your courses and the design is a really important word here because a lot of your courses are really tightly designed But you've designed them with the idea of making the student or allowing the student even are allowing like Hoping or engaging the student to bring their own personal interest to the topic and Really centering it around the student and the student's interest so that their exploration during your course Is actually centered around their interests and hence something they can communicate to the rest of the class and in some ways Take some you know personal interest and expertise Teaching other people and I am intrigued by that because that is something that I think maybe Through some osmosis of just being on the web is kind of how DS 106 Took shape is that notion of kind of empowering the student to bring their interests and their knowledge To the floor through their blog etc. So can you talk a little bit about how you design that? Right, it's it is so similar to DS 106 The you know I teach gen ed right and so the students who show up in the classes are From all the different schools and colleges departments and majors and that's great, right? I mean that could be this wonderful learning opportunity for everybody in class You know, maybe they've never even met a supply chain major or an opera major, right? So so it's this great Diverse set of students in terms of their academic backgrounds plus just natural human diversity, right? Individuality different experiences people from different countries speak different languages. I Love that as a teacher and as a teacher I always got to enjoy that right because you know all the students in the class But the students don't all get to know that about each other So one of the brilliant things about a blog space is that everybody has their own Blog and they bring themselves to that blog and they put themselves in that blog so that their work is contextualized in a personal context, right? So think about it that the LMS discussion board De-contextualizes everything it removes it from who you are your space your presence But in a blog your stories your notes your research your your observations and other kinds of blog posts They all are in a space together That's you that someone can connect with and explore if they want to learn more about you And then for me as a teacher one of the most fun things the very first posts that students do just to learn how to blog and how to add images in a post is to write about a favorite place and some of them do it in a Like where my home is and and they tell about where they come from or else it's a a trip They took or else it's something just like my favorite places is is a cafe So they respond to that prompt in all kinds of different ways And then I come back in and I'm leaving comments on those posts Usually I don't comment on the post but the first post of course I comment on and that's where I start trying to make connections to the course content so Places connect up so naturally with what we study in the classes like a world mythology class Well, you know if someone's been to the Caribbean and they love it as a tourist. I love telling them It's like I have literally dozens of books full of folktales from the Caribbean You know, so would you like to learn something about the Bahamas in terms of folktales and folklore? And then with the India class you might think that's hard Right that how would I find a way to start a student's process of connecting up with India? You know, they signed up for the class because it's an online gen ed class, right? Not because they necessarily want to know anything about the epics of ancient India But lo and behold, you know, there's music. There's food. There's yoga. There's mountains. There's beaches There's the India and all of its vast Beauty and so it's exciting for me to try to find the different ways to get the students thinking about it How can I connect to India? And it works great, right? Because we start that process immediately And then I've learned something about the students So I keep coming back to whatever new thing I learn about the students like here's how that might connect up with India Like all my pre med students is like I have to tell you about the God of medicine in India And how he was created and think about this or in the pandemic Jim You're gonna love this if you have not googled something like and I'm sure you haven't because why would you google something like Contagion goddess corona virus India or something like that and you will find all these people who are looking at Manifestations of the goddess as a demon slayer and how she might be able to be invoked in order to slay the corona Asura the corona demon and You have nurses in the ICU's in India These nurses in the ICU they're doing the goddess with the multiple arms and so they'll get like three nurses standing back to back Holding all their medical instruments looking like a manifestation of Davy with her arms and all her weapons But their weapons are the ICU Instruments so anyway, you know finding stuff like that to share with the students is such a pleasure from for me Because I learn a ton of stuff right when I go poking around looking for what I can share And I'm really good at navigating the internet so I can use those skills and and when I send stuff back to the students for example, I'll send them a shortened URL version of a Google search So that they can see the search terms I used and like some of the advanced search operators and stuff so they can start to learn how to better Use the internet for themselves because I'll tell you here We are 20 years later. My students are still being told don't use Wikipedia And so they'll end up at totally terrible websites because they've been told to ignore Wikipedia Which is increasingly better and better and more and more valuable especially for the subjects I teach Wikipedia is pretty excellent You know, so I'm still fighting that battle but instead of fighting it in terms of saying hey look at me Do what I do. It's more like you were saying before I follow the students Well, here's where you're going Let me add something to that or let me give you some choices that I think you're gonna enjoy and and just Helping right, you know and and we all need help. That's how you learn right? There's something you don't know how to do you want to be able to do it Well, you probably need help and the internet is such a great space for people to help each other, right? I mean I learned something new on the internet like not every day every probably ten minutes