A Step Ahead (or perhaps just ketchup)

As has been well-documented, we entered this 'moocventure' a bit naively and with only three weeks of preparation. I certainly take the blame for that. But, like my lifelong favorite baseball team - the Chicago Cubs - struggling from behind and valiantly trying to catch up is something I am very used to. And, that's the story of the past two days.

It has not gone without notice that some of the weekly resource pages for the coming weeks have been a bit... perhaps "spare" is a good term; or perhaps "redundant" of prior pages also applies. Perhaps some of you who have taught a new class with little available advanced prep time have experienced this - you are trying to keep one week - or one step - ahead of the class. We front-loaded materials into the first couple of weeks (thanks to Karen,Carrie, Shari, Emily and others) that we knew had to be ready in the first days of the MOOC. So, these past couple of days, we have been filling in some of our favorite resources and a few new ones into the middle weeks. As you look ahead, you will see that we have some more links and more complete bios for speakers. We are not done - we won't ever be done - but, know that we are tending to the site and adding materials.

Our goal in the weekly resource pages is not to create a comprehensive reading library of materials on the topic. Instead, we hope to give you a sampling of materials. We included tweeters and bloggers because those are sources that keep on giving - day after day, they put out the newest information. They are perpetually renewable. We included sites that seem to be established and reliable so we would have touchstones to which we could return on these topics. And, we included journals and articles that seem to deal with the topic and are relatively fresh. In sum, the goal of the reading is to give you a sweet sampling on the topic where you can get some new; some established; and where possible, something thought-provoking. We know that you will freely run with the topics in wikis, blogs, tweets, moodle, video, and more.

So, in a sense the resources listed are like a little weekly picnic at which you can browse - we will work to catch up (ketchup anyone?) - and keep the salads fresh for your browsing pleasure.

"See" you online.