PP 104: The More or Less Final Version
About 20 minutes ago, I put my more or less final PP104 project online. On the whole, I'm satisfied with it, but there are still things I would adjust in the best of all possible worlds.
One thing I'd do is to make the amount of white space uniform at the bottom of each page.
Another thing I'd do is to improve the navigational system.
One more thing I'd do is to locate and link the excellent "phrasal verbs in depth" site (from Italy, if I remember correctly) that I chanced upon a year or more ago. It's typical of me that I saved it somewhere but now can't find it. It could be on a bookmarks/favorites list, on a Zip disk, on my backup drive, . . . .
I also wish I had something to replace the cheesy graphic that "signs" each page. I could probably make something, but enough is enough.
I think this lesson unit is something my own students could work with. If I end up teaching 4th-level grammar, I'll give it a try.
I thoroughly enjoyed working on this project, but it was time-intensive. I probably put in at least 30 hours on the project this week alone—and it may well have been much more time than that. I'd like to say that the project is typical of materials I create regularly for my college classes, but it isn't: not enough time. I will say, however, that the project is the kind of thing that I'd like to do regularly.
In my opinion, the strengths are the variety of exercise formats, fairly well-developed lesson- plan components, and a very usable links list. In my view, the main weakness is that the unit isn't really "plug and play": I could make it work quite well, I think, but I'm not sure how true that would be of others.
It will be interesting to see what, if any, comments there are.
I'm very grateful to Dafne and Teresa for conducting a class that made something like my project possible.
D. O.
posted by Dennis @ 10:36 PM
2 Comments:
I think it was the German architect Mies Van Der Rohe who said "God is in the details" ;-)
Btw,I am one of those who save pages and then when I need them, I do not know where I have put them. This is happening more frequently since I came back after 5 years in Spain. It seems I am not mentally established here yet. I am using my office and my bedroom as if in someone else's place :-(
Dennis we did not mean to have any of you spending 30+ hours in the lesson plan, I hope you can take advantage of it in your classes. I will give the link to a colleague who I know will love your lesson and will use it with her students (if you don't mind, of course).
Dennis, it was OUR pleasure to have you in the course, and I really hope we keep in touch and might eventually work together on a project (I might invite you to talk to my class, how about that?)
Cheers,
Daf
PS:BTW, I have blogged your blog on one of my blogs, he he
Daf's Raco"
Hi, Daf.
Thanks for your latest comments.
Yes, it was Van der Rohe who said "God is in the details." I was curious about his name because "Mies" sounded Dutch, not German, to me. I found and interesting online biography (you've probably already seen it) here:
http://www.designboom.com/portrait/mies/bg.html
I knew that he had designed a number of buildings in the U.S., but I didn't know that he became a U.S. citizen until I read the biography.
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It's comforting to know that I'm not the only person who saves things and then can't find them! One thing I'd like to do this summer is to archive hundreds (maybe thousands) of digital photo files onto CDs and also to do the same thing with exercise materials (mostly in MS Word). If I do it, it will be a tedious task but it will also make it easier (hopefully) to find things.
Don't worry about the 30+ hours. I spent that much time because I wanted to. I'm very detail-oriented, and how things look is also important to me. Of course what that means is that I often don't do particular projects or put them off until later because I don't have time for them. Last night and this morning, for example, I'm working on a website of photos from the four-day workshop I attended during the last week of PP104. So far, I've chosen and edited the photos and made thumbnails. Now what I have to do is to make one or more preview pages (with the thumbnails) and then about 30 display pages, each showing a single, much larger photo).
I'm happy that you're going to give the URL for the lesson to a colleague. Let me know how it works for her, OK?
I definitely want to keep in touch and would really enjoy working together. I'd also be honored to talk to your class--though I know very little about architecture. I do have one architectural topic that has interested me for some time, though: wooden churches in the Carpathian mountains. You can see line drawings of a number of different types here:
http://www.rusyn.org/?root=rusyns&rusyns=arch
By the way, I have an idea for a videoconference involving you and Teresa. I'll send you details by e-mail.
What an honor to be included in your raco!
Thanks again for the comments, Daf.
D. O.
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