Week 6

Well this was the week in which students were required to submit their podcasts. Initially when students were assigned the task and made aware of the fact that they had the option of either doing one that was just audio, or alternatively they could include video - most seemed to be planning to do just audio. For practically all, it's their first time preparing a podcast and so audio seems daunting enough without making life unnecessarily complicated by trying to make a video. However, in the end it appears as though most students have in fact produced a video. I guess that once they sat down to do it they realised that they did in fact have the necessary skills and equipment to make a video. For me of course this has given rise to complications as the videos have been submitted in many different formats and I need to make sure that they can all be played on Windows Media Player. This is taking a bit longer than anticipated for some but it should all be sorted in the next few days. Again there were no surprises - despite being warned not to, many students still went ahead and submitted files called "podcast". Some submitted 3 or four separate files and expect me to put it all together for them. Nothing surprising here - all in a day's work.

As students submitted their podcasts we began working on their next assignment which is to write their first formal essay - the first draft of which is due in a couple of weeks. The essay will be based on one text which they read for the first lesson of the week. I gave them a handout with questions that drew their attention to the overall structure and techniques used in the article. Students got to discuss their answers in pairs and then if they weren't finished by the end of class they were to complete it for homework. Practically a whole lesson was taken up explaining the requirements for the essay - length, submission to turnitin.com, what should accompany the first draft etc. I didn't notice anyone taking notes. Hopefully everyone will understand the instructions provided. If so, one wonders why I feel the need to explain them thoroughly in class.