This class was really one of my favorites. I think there were a lot of things that worked really well in terms of how the class was organized and run, as well as the content of the class.
Google Wave turned out to be a really helpful resource for the class. At first it took some getting used to, but it did allow for everyone to assist in putting up ideas from the class discussion and then have that as a resource later. The class room’s physical layout and the fact that everyone had a computer to use was pretty key to the class and using google wave made it easy to keep everyone from getting too distracted on their computers.
The blog was really helpful and interesting and a nice addition to the class’s discussions, readings and goals, the only thing is sometimes two posts per week were difficult to keep up with. Otherwise people brought in a lot of really interesting ideas and connections onto the blog, expanding our topics even further into our lives/cyberspace. Also, leaving up the blogs even after the class is over is great and will allow us to constantly look back and check out the interesting connections we’d made all semester.
The readings were awesome – the progression of the topics made sense in a theoretical and historical way – with each topic building off the last.
This was really a great class and I think that one thing to not change though is in keeping it small – I don’t think the class would have worked as well or been as engaging if it were in a much larger setting.
Thanks for a great semester all!