Monday, January 31, 2011

First Class - First Impression

Today was the first day of the semester at Salem College.  It was a busy day.  As always (at least on Monday and Wednesdays) I began my day with a 10am class at WSSU, followed by a two hour lab that starts at 11am.  Since classes started at Salem College I had to quickly walk over to Salem for the Grassroots biology class.   A total of 18 students were enrolled in the class and all of them were present the first day, always a good sign.  I introduced myself and then asked the students to introduce themselves to the rest of the class.  I am always pleased when students share some of their background.  It always make for a more interesting dialog.  I also think it takes some courage to share information about yourself with a group of strangers (at least before you really get to know people).

I really look forward to hearing what students think about the Bike Town USA article and to learn about their ecological footprints, when we get to that on Wednesday.  It will be interesting to "play" with the numbers (on myfootprint.org) a little bit and see how the changes that we "make" influence our scores.  I'm also interested in watching the student Vlogs and reading the blog posts as we begin the semester.  I have already decided that weekly blogs/vlogs make more sense than to have students try to keep track of whether they have one due that week.  I'm not sure if I will post the Vlogs here, maybe an edited collection from time to time would make sense.

Alright, I'll keep it short today.

1 comment:

  1. I felt very comfortable with Dr. Allen and the students were extremely friendly. I think I am really going to like this class because of the design of the syllabus. It is amazing what you can learn in such a short period of time going into the unknown.

    ReplyDelete