Practical Preparations

The students on the course need to hear from me today (one week to go). What they need to access is:

• the course web site
• a blog
• and a pre-course podcast

I've just got myself a .Mac account, so I'll be doing the podcasting using that. I've started a blog on Blogger, and the web site will be constructed in Dreamweaver and put out on a Högskolan server. The iWeb program on the Mac is a wonderful tool for making web sites, but it's a bit limited for an entire course site.

Although this is the start of hands-on preparations, I've been mulling over what to do and how to run the course for a long time now. In the words of Bertil Martinsson "Alla slott började som luftslott" (every castle started off as a castle in the air)! The procedure for constructing a course like this is to start with the budget, which I did in late October. The allocation of hours was 46.5 for the entire course. These are 'clock hours', so they've been broken down to fit the various course activities. The breakdown means that we can have 5 two-hour sessions in world + the Course Launch.

We've tested the logistics and technology of the course quite a few times in the last couple of months (including on the pilot course in September-October 2007), so that bit's under control.

The administration seems to be working, in that the applications have been coming in and being processed the way they should. We had a few problems with studera.nu at the beginning, but they seem to have been sorted out.

So, what needs doing now is:

• decide on the details of the assessments (so that I can see what needs to happen during the course meetings, and what it needs to say on the website)
• create the website (which is going to involve a bit of Photoshopping and then quite a lot of Dreamweaving)
• make the first podcast
• update the blog
• create a database on Filemaker for the course
• do a mailshot to the students

Wonder if I'll get it done by lunchtime!