Fall Diary, August 20: Day 3... tagboards!

Today was the bureaucratic day of Orientation Week, boring and not very exciting to write about. I only had a few students to track down who were no-shows, and there were students who dropped (which I anticipate... indeed, I count on it - I overenroll, knowing some will drop... but never knowing just how many), and then I was able to make the Blog Directory.

That means I will be able to set up the responding groups on Thursday, and I'm going to be trying to do a better job with that part of the classes this year. Given the chaotic nature of each week — where it's never sure just which students will do the blog posts and likewise which students will do the responding — I've decided not to try any longer to do groups that persist from week to week. Instead, I'll be doing new groups every week, and I should know on Thursday just who has posted a story for the week and who has not. During Orientation Week there will probably be some stragglers, but that's okay - I'll be putting everybody in groups tomorrow, and then, starting in Week 2, I'll be able to see who has published a story (grace period deadline at noon on Thursday), allowing me to base the groups on just who has published a story that week and who has not.

So, not the most exciting stuff... but I did manage to set up tagboards for the classes. That was fun! Here's the Myth-Folklore Board, and here's the Indian Epics Board. I think this could be really useful because if students also use the hashtags in their posts, it should all show up together.

And tagboard has an embed feature! Let's see how it looks!!!