I noticed a few things, and thought about a few things, and wanted to try to write some of my thoughts down in a vague attempt to maintain my reflective practice as a teacher. We’ll see how it goes. I figure something is better than nothing.

One thing I noticed while walking around the computer lab this week (week 2) I noticed that I got very different responses from students depending on how I approached them. When I approached students with either “How are you going?” or “You alright?” I got very little response, positive “Yep, I’m fine” type responses. However, the same students when asked “do you have any questions?” they quite happily respond with “well actually…” and asked their questions. An important distinction… to encourage them to feel comfortable asking their questions.
One thing I’d like to do if I where to teach this unit (or another unit) in the future is include a discussion board. I added an FAQ as a stop-gap measure but a discussion board could potentially be better. Not sure though, I feel the individual interaction with students via email might feel more welcoming and personal to them. Depends on what I’m going for I guess.
Minor point: I set the assessment deadlines for 5pm with the thought that I didn’t want to encourage people staying up late at night working on assignments at the last minute. Several students have asked for the deadlines to be moved to midnight as they work during the day. I’m still undecided on what the best course of action is here: students have plenty of time to work on assignments so if the have to work on them late at night, they can do so prior to the deadline easily enough… I think I still like my original reasoning. Something to revisit though.