CUIN 6397 - Practicum in IT, Summer 2006

Two interesting topics are open for discussion this week as part of our class exploration.

First, the following website displays an online tour of Sommerville, Massachusetts that has many similarities to the Third Ward Online Tour we are helping develop. Take a look at: http://www.somervillecdc.org/communitymap/






















And then post a comment in which you discuss your reaction to this resource and talk about what is the same as our site, what's different, what new ideas does this bring up, can we use this site to help us in our own desing, etc.

Secondly, you will see that there are two comments to the last posting from Sensen, the Chinese student we discussed earlier. It might be interesting to post some additional comments that revolve around whether it's possible to collaborate with interesting people who live on the other side of the planet. From Sensen's last message, it seems that we have all been invited to a festival in China. But since most of us probably can't make it this summer, perhaps we could ask Sensen to send us some pictures so that we can participate virtually. What else do you think we could do to facilitate a collaboration between us?

CUIN 6397 - Practicum in IT, Summer 2006

As part of the development of the Dawn Installation Project, our class has been posting messages about our work and sharing ideas about some of the content that will be used in the project as well as some of the technology tools we're using--like this blog.

Recently, I recieved an email message from a university student in China who is using blogging as a method of online educational communication in courses at Tianjin Foreign Studies University--which I visited in 2002.


Although the student sees the educational value of blogs, as evidenced by the statement:

"I believe the wide application of weblogs on online learning in China will be more and more popular and will attach great value to the development of Internet-based education;" I was asked to comment on the following:

"What methods can we use to guarantee that the topics students discuss are only concerning the academic knowledge? I found in many academic weblogs, the result of the students' discussion has nothing to do with the initial academic topics."

Since one of the reasons we started this blog was to see how students and teachers can use these kinds of online comunication tools as part of our course, I thought it might be helpful if each of us in could try to answer the student's question from our own perspective.

Please post a reply to this message in which you discuss your ideas and then we can send the student our comments--and also perhaps get her (or him) to contribute to our blog!

CUIN 6397 - Practicum in IT, Summer 2006

During this July 4th holiday break, participants in our course at the Universitry of Houston are at the half-way point in the summer semester. Students and community partners are actively engaged in discussion and modification of the components they are developing for the Third Ward Online Tour. It seems appropriate at this time to try to document some of this process and engage in an online discussion regarding where we are and where we should be going.

So, please add a comment to this post in which you describe any issues that have arisen during your work on this project and ask any questions you have that you would like addressed when we return to class next week.