• @Giz­modo: Microsoft Courier: two screen "concept" tablet — um book­let. Lots of pos­si­ble impli­ca­tions for eRead­ing. http://​bit.​ly/​1​9mLew #
• @joeSchem­ber #rit #print – Clearly they didn't take my Data­base Pub­lish­ing Class — didn't I use that as a what not to do on the first day? in reply to joeSchem­ber #
• @heather­shae Unlock­ing isn't scary at all… which one are you using? in reply to heather­shae #
• Mmm… my apart­ment smells of sage and brown butter — as Martha and @LJC would say, this is a good thing. #

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• Get­ting back on my feet after a bout of being under the weather… now I just have to make it through Latour… #
• RT (@mike­ha­tora @gabejoseph) API: Many U.S. news­pa­pers still don't use common dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion tools – http://​bit.​ly/​1​0yPtM #
• Stretch — 3 dense read­ings, 2 hours — I can totally do this! #
• @pachecod is twting at Knight-​Batten #kb2009. Youtube: Now every­one can be a reporter. Note that doesn't mean every­one can be a jour­nal­ist. #
• Typofile with an exel­lent exam­ple of sub-​pixel ren­der­ing with the You Tube Logo – some­times the best white is yellow: http://​bit.​ly/​84nU6 #
• RT @tri­colourfree: unfor­tu­nately I'm hardly ever in that early on a Friday. But I'll make it to spar­ring one of these days! #
• RT @ljc: Double header http://​www.​rocderby.com tonight! Ben­e­fits 2 local no kill animal shel­ters! — Wish we could go but Dre's sick :-( #

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• RT @kodakCB: I'm going to have a really fun Twit­ter give­away tomor­row! Stay tuned! #
• Been read­ing and writ­ing at the Mann library since I ended class at about 11.00am. Who deserves a cap­puc­cino? @mat­tBernius deserves one! #
• Woot! Just won a @live­scribe smart pen during their Cor­nell day! Happy birth­day to me! Thanks #livescribe… #
• @JoAn­nAt­ti­son Thnx! in reply to JoAn­nAt­ti­son #
• RT @live­scribe: @Cor­nell, giving away 200 2 GB Pulse smart­pens! Who wants one? Stop by the Cor­nell Store! [mb: I got mine!] #
• RT @geoff­Schweiger: #live­scribe pens are great for record­ing notes and con­duct­ing research…. what can I say, I'm a tech geek… #

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So I just made it through the FWS class I’ve been fear­ing the most. Lec­tures I can handle; ditto read­ing dis­cus­sions. But get­ting stu­dents to cri­tique their peer’s work, that’s some­thing really new. I had tried sim­i­lar exer­cises at RIT and it never worked out as I had hoped. Thank­fully, things went really smoothly.

That smooth­ness was in no small part related to the qual­ity of work that the stu­dents turned in. The first assign­ment for the class was to write you bio as a “dig­i­tal native.” The results were really fun for me to read and con­tained a lot of good mate­r­ial to pull. While there were plenty of gram­mat­i­cal and con­struc­tion issues in them, the great news was that they were all “complex” ones for the most part. By com­plex, I mean that we were work­ing on improv­ing clar­ity versus con­ju­gat­ing verbs or unrav­el­ing tenses (the latter prob­lems being things that I’m not really qual­i­fied to teach).

The biggest prob­lem that I faced, and will con­tinue to face for the rest of the semes­ter, is where the sub­ject line comes in. I’m still having a lot of prob­lems, accu­rately budget enough time for the mate­r­ial I want to cover. During the class, I broke every­one into groups and had them work on “diagnosing” and “correcting” exem­plary “problem” excepts from the papers (prob­lem is in quotes because at times there wasn’t a pure prob­lem with a sen­tence, it was just less than opti­mal). This gen­er­ated a lot of good dis­cus­sion. Unfor­tu­nately, I didn’t real­ize how much time it would take to rejig the first four sen­tences. The result was that most groups spent the first 15 min­utes or so, work­ing on the first fifth of the assign­ment. The net result was that I extended the group time to enable every­one to get through the work­sheet. That unfor­tu­nately ate in to the time I had on the back­end to syn­the­size all of the group results in a guided dis­cus­sion. So the “discussion” became a mini-​lecture, and in that process, I lost the chance to ensure that all stu­dents con­tributed some­thing in the group environment.

On the plus side, a few years ago this all would have really flus­tered me. Espe­cially since it was hap­pen­ing in the midst of a class that I’m still in the process of devel­op­ing. I’m not saying that this is now old hat. It isn’t. What is hap­pen­ing is that I’m learn­ing to work smarter in terms of prepa­ra­tion and class plan­ning. And that, as Martha says, “is a good thing.”