I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I don’t post a lot in the next 4 weeks. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if I post a lot either.
 My Computer Supported Collaborative Learning class is off to a running start – in 4 days, there have been a total of 219 posts in the forums. It took me forever to read the first two articles (I’m a slow reader anyway, and one of these articles in particular was somewhat dense) and I’ve got 5 more for the next few days. All have been in PDF format (boo) but I have been able to finagle the ones that have text into HTML so I can use Zotero to highlight and annotate, which is by far my favorite way to make notes. (even if Zotero is having issues un-highlighting.)
This class is bringing up some nice questions, like “how important is collaboration, anyway?” “Does computer supported collaborative learning represent a whole new era in teaching, or is it simply another tool in the bag, so to speak?” and, the all important “what do you do about the luddites?”
Seriously, I’m having a great time, and I really wish this course could have been an 8 week course as intended. My fellow students are interesting and come from a variety of majors, which is refreshing. My only problem is the time issue, which is making me seriously question my intent to take three classes each semester next year. But that’s another post entirely…
Whoa! Zotero does highlighting and annotating? Maybe I “knew” that but it doesn’t sound familiar.
I’d really like it if it did it in PDFs. Macs’s native PDF reader does both but it is super clunky and greatly increases the file size.
Maybe when your class is over we can have small conversation about this. I wonder how much file sizes change with Zotero.
Good luck in your class! Now back to my own homework.