New Courses this term

Here are my course interests and experiences from the first day of Spring term:

ED298 Online Learning communities
This is a phenomenal course introducing Web 2.0 technologies.
The number of blogs every 5 years doubles. It is a exponential curve. Blogs attract people who want visibility and authority( 33%) or to share a record (31%). Or another astonishing Web 2.0 example is YouTube launched in May of last year. YouTube attracts 15 million unique users a day. With 166 million online users in the United States, I am hoping to learn about new technologies and gain theoretical foundations to link the vast numbers of Americans online. Products I hope to deliver: Learning 2.0 list that combines cutting edge pedgagogy and technology to define a new standard of learning. I hope to update my website with new tools. So above all I hope to use the tools and be abe to talk about them.Cool tools: tagCloud, Calendar feature on Typepad, You tube. Books to read: The Cathedral & the Bazaar

Chinese 8: Basic Conversational Chinese
This term we are learning past tense. Our final exam is being able to conduct a 15 minute conversation. This class is fast and intense I'm hoping to stay with it.

ED 380: Shaba Internship
This term I hope to actually build stuff and learn Maya. I want to be able to put something into a PS2 console and play it. My goal is to take all the research from first quarter and demonstrate how a human-centered, learning-driven approach can yield innovative and fun games. I submitted my proposal to Shaba yesterday. We'll see how it goes.

ED 229C: LDT Seminar
We are reading How People Learn. This year we will focus on creating polished proposals for our master's project. I also hope to fill in the gaps of my learning theory since this will be one of my last education courses.

ME110a Design Sketching
I am most excited about this class. It's going to be a lot of work, I can tell already. On the first day we spend 30 minutes drawing Lego blocks. Our homework is to imagine a mouse house. Sketching is an essential skill for game designers. This class will give me the skills to quickly and confidently share my ideas to improve my communication and enhance my influence. See the
class website for a syllabus.