Google's LMS- Google Classroom

Haha! This is how rumors get started-offhand blog post titles. But seriously, the big question that keeps coming up for me is, where the heck IS Google in this big mess of Blackboard-type learning management systems??  With Google docs, Google sites, Google search, gmail, and the imperfect but multitudinous stabs they've taken at social networking, PLEASE tell me there's someone at Google working on putting all this into one place! I mean, there's already a nice aggregation of these Google materials for educators---hook us UP in higher ed, Googs!

                    professors and TAs storm the Google headquarters demanding a Google LMS
                                                            photo credit: New York Times (February 25th, 2011)

Maybe it's a foible of my generation but if I were in charge of choosing a Learning Management System for UGA I would pretty much refuse to invest much money in it. (Or maybe it's because I'm obsessed with bartering ---Athenians, check out the Athens Time Bank for "indirect" bartering of all sorts!) But with all the budget cuts affecting UGA, wouldn't it be better to put, oh say HALF of the gazillion dollars, that might be spent on a new LMS and hire a small team of expert techie-teachers to train faculty on how to set up a good course management system for themselves using existing free materials. I understand the appeal of having everything centrally located and maybe each teacher's materials could be accessed from one central UGA hosted site but even if not, so what? We have a different textbook and a different classroom for each class, so if students had a different website to go to for each class, it wouldn't be the end of the world. then maybe the school could afford to pay staff (and TAs) a living wage and pay professors the competitive wages they deserve too.

I'm sure there are a lot of reasonable dissenting perspectives I'm leaving out of this idealistic rant so i'm looking forward to hearing some discussion from this. But remember you're talking to someone who has already chosen to use Open Office rather than Microsoft Office.

Private vs. Public Self

having done a small research project on facebook in higher ed, it seems like the most frequent issue that comes up is balancing the private and public side of yourself as an instructor. on the one hand, the research shows that high self-disclosure (in the appropriate sense) leads to better student interactions, motivation, and ratings of teacher competence!

i have always been a fan of being a real person to my students. i talk to them about favorite restaurants, my job as a yoga instructor, and even how interesting it is when an activity works with one class and not with another. but i wonder, is it necessary or even prudent to do this self-disclosure biz on FACEBOOK?

this is the place where anyone can tag you in a photo at any time. and sure, an embarrassing photo could be the result of a crazy night that you could choose not to have in the first place. but embarrassing photos also result when a friend catches you with your eyes half closed and Solo cup of iced tea in hand, when a friend posts a picture where SHE looks awesome but you have a big slice of bra exposed, or when you're onstage at an avant-garde theatre production called Hotel F*&k. the point is, that none of these are things that i should be embarrassed about, but that still doesn't mean that i want to publicize everything about myself to every student. if one of my students was artsy enough to have found out about that play themselves and bold enough to sit through it, then so be it. but some would be mortified by it and i see no reason to put THEM in that situation either.

This is an excellent place to start making your private self a little more private AND your public self a little more public

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/creating-your-web-presence-a-primer-for-academics/30458

some say that having a private self is a concept from another era, and if that's the case, consider me an old fogey.