[CITASA] Suggestions for teaching introductory sociology

[Piotr Konieczny]

George W. Dowdall, Ph.D. wrote:
> At the very last minute, I've been asked to teach a small introductory 
> sociology course in a well-stocked PC lab. Can anyone point me to 
> interesting ways of teaching this course using Internet and PC resources 
> in live time?

In live time, hmmm?

Have everybody commenting during lecture/discussion/etc. on a live IRC 
chat whose feed is visible on the classroom's main screen. If you are 
running a presentation, this would however require two screens... but 
could work better for discussions (display the question on the screen, 
than switch to the IRC feed). Just to be clear: the IRC chat is an 
addition to, not a replacement of, a normal discussion.

Another idea: teach with wikis and Wikipedia :)

http://prokonsul.blogspot.com/2009/08/teaching-with-wikis-and-wikipedia.html

I am just putting a finishing touches on my intro level class that will 
begin on Monday:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects/User:Piotrus/Fall_2009

With a computer lab for the class, you could dedicate a small part of 
every (or some) lectures to this group assignment, and be there to 
answer their questions immediately. In my classes, there is an 
unavoidable delay between students running into a problem and reporting 
it to me.

I'd love to hear other ideas of teaching with live time net access for 
all students (it is, after all, the future).

-- 
Piotr Konieczny

"The problem about Wikipedia is, that it just works in reality, not in 
theory."