Only a few of you know me already, but I’m a history instructor at MiraCosta College in Oceanside, California. I got together some early-adopter faculty in 2005 and we created the Program for Online Teaching, to help other instructors learn well online, and to learn from each other. I’ve taken two other open courses (though as a credit student): CCK08 and EC&I831.
I’m not terribly visual, and I’m still trying to understand mashup culture as a good thing, so I thought it would be challenging to take this class in the open.
Years ago I decided I didn’t want all the stuff I created residing on the college servers. I have a Basic account at Lunarpages, and I’ve always been happy with it. Their support is helpful, and so far I have plenty of space for programs. I can add anything I want through the C-Panel, including Moodle and some of that wonderful old open source stuff (called freeware then), even though I’m not a programmer. I had to learn some things, of course. I got some unwanted traffic/use/spam on my site, because I didn’t understand the CHMOD idea. I still don’t know everything I need to know about bandwidth (for example, I wasn’t sure whether I had enough in the basic account to run my own open course, because I’m not sure what the numbers mean, really). And although I am usually religious about keeping a copy of everything on my hard drive, for this class I’m winging it in a lot of ways, which is liberating.
Welcome Lisa,This should be fun, and I love what you have shared thus far. I also like the Mira Costa online learning page, and it seems like you all have been mastering the personalized, open tools for each professor to own themselves for years—that’s awesome. Looking forward to more craziness, and glad you see this class (or at least your approach to it) as liberating, I really hope that becomes the general vibe.
Hey Lisa. Nice to see another CCC faculty member in ds106!
Thanks, Jim. A lot of what’s happening in our program will soon seem bittersweet. We are heading toward a darker time where much of our innovative volunteer spirit will likely be administratively swept aside, and sooner rather than later. I hope my despair doesn’t creep into my stories too much…@Noise Professor — heck, with you posting the Prelinger Archive and a gif from The Year Without A Santa Clause, we’re on the same page no matter what!