John Colton's blog

I had a conference in Madison a week or two ago. It was fun to see the UW-Madison campus. Larger than I expected! The conference was about the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), the "Summer Institute" of the UW System's Office of Professional & Instructional Development (OPID). I'm the UW-La Crosse "Wisconsin Teaching Fellow" this year, and among other things that involves me creating and executing my own SoTL project. Right now the front runner is for me to examine what differences arise when students are given closed book/notes exams vs. allowing them to create a one page notesheet. Do they study longer/shorter, are they more motivated, do they retain the material better, and so forth.

I just finished "The Black Ship", by Christopher Rowley. It had some extremely interesting elements, but I didn't think the execution was nearly as good as the first two "Bazil Broketail" books which I had read last month. It seemed like this must have been an early effort by Rowley. [quick web search] Yes, it looks like this might have been his second book.

Now I'm in the middle of "Dragon Rider", by Cornelia Funke. It's really good, like the last one I read from her ("Inkheart"), but just like that one it was obviously meant for kids. Still, highly recommended.

# posted by John Colton @ 11:33 AM