Courage and time.

I've been off this blog since late July, which is both total cowardice and the nature of privileging actual teaching over writing about teaching. To the three folks who follow me, sorry.

To begin again, I'm still working on my four-part project, a world history course that:

1. uses an anti-poverty course design principles I'm creating (current iteration is here)
2. uses digital history so that students might learn both history and job skills at the introductory level
3. uses only sources that are already free to students, such as OER or library databases for which they have access.
4. bundle the course and give it away under a creative common license.

I'm succeeding in getting students to use digital history tools, but I'm concerned that my formative assessment is so poor or the bar is so low that I'm not optimizing their learning.

I'm only partly successful in my online classes with my anti-poverty course design principles, largely because I haven't figured out good workflows for closed captioning and I'm making up lessons as I teach. For most teachers that's fine, including me, but I know that poor students can't offramp and onramp for lessons as easily, so just-in-time teaching isn't optimal.

I have stuck with nothing but free resources, but connecting students to those resources has proven a challenge (future post alert).

I'm nowhere close to bundling this course. This summer is realistic.

I'll be posting more courageously again, sharing what's working and what's not.