Week+2

Week 2: January 18th 2010 =Thoughts from before the class:=

Sunday evening: Tomorrow's class will look at **different Google apps**. While some members of my family have been using Google and different Google apps for years, I am more of a spectator than a participant. I have watched **Goggle Earth** take me from one place to another. I have flown along the Long Traverse Trail in Gros Morne National Park in a plane. I know that the yellow school bus which could be seen on my street is no longer there. I have followed directions which were generated by **Google maps**. I know that there's a calendar too. But, I do not usually go there by myself, I am taken there by somebody saying "you have to see this!" I do google on a regular basis. Last term I made some minimal use of **Google Docs**. I am interested in learning more about Google apps in a broader sense than the specific applications which my family members have identified.

I have not been in a classroom with **interactive response systems** but I have attended presentations on their use at the annual conference of the CSC (Chemistry) in several different years. I do remember when their use in university classes was considered to be very new and innovative. They are so anonymous in comparison to a show of hands **:-)**

So, after coffee with a University Relations Officer from the Development Office in the morning, a class and then a lunch with some colleagues from math class last term, I will be in the computer lab to hear about Google apps, interactive response systems and whatever else that Richard Grignon thinks that we need to know. I am looking forward to it.

=Thoughts from after the class:= Check out the latest pomegranate phone from Nova Scotia :-) Click here.. Thanks to my son for showing me this.

I enjoyed Monday's class. **Richard Grignon is an enthusiastic presenter**. His activities were good - sufficiently open-ended that the 'whiz kids' could happily do them and the rest of us could too. The limerick was the least successful, mainly because we were slow to share it and we did not follow true limerick form. The idea was good. We just did not do it quite as planned.

I had not realized that it is possible for the teacher to see how each student answered when using the **clickers**. That certainly makes them a more useful tool.

The **main question** which I had from seeing the work of Richard's students was: Does he worry about **good grammar** with his students who are writing in French? and Has he shown them how to create the necessary accents, because some texts did not seem to have any :-)!!