The quarter is over and I'm starting to find my feet again!! Developing two new classes kept me pretty busy. I remember when I was a student, racing to get my papers in on time. Things aren't that different now, in my new role as professor, the routine seems strangely familiar. Instead of turning in my paper at the beginning of class to be graded by the instructor, I present an oral version of my paper to the class to be graded (usually implicitly!) by fifty very smart students...Just as intimidating! But I'm not saying it wasn't fun -- I loved it. It's the best thing I can think of doing with myself vocationally. Nothing could be better.
Just now, I'm getting ready to read my grade for the course (the student reviews of the course)...I'm using these praises/critiques to plan the next course, so I can see what worked and what didn't. Technologically, we used blogs, wikis and podcasts (extra credit), and next quarter I would like to add social bookmarking (del.icio.us and flickr), some video casting of the lectures, and some elementary RSS, but I don't want to push them too far. We'll see how it goes. I hope to get a good start on the planning in the next few weeks.
Right now, I will get a bit of a breather, as next quarter I only have one course to teach, Emerging Churches, which is an intensive that meets three hours a day for ten days in late January, early February. It will be a good first go with the new book, which will now form the backbone of the course. We will take a chapter per class session and explore it as far as we can go...It may be the last time I teach it with Eddie Gibbs -- he is retiring :^( -- so I will prize our time together. Eddie and I love to teach this material together -- we piggy-back on each other really well. I can talk about churches less than ten years old, and he can talk about all the other ones! The constant in my time with Eddie is laughter, and I'm sure this class will be no exception...
At any rate, it is good to slow down a bit and enjoy all the great stuff God is doing -
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