Robby Prenkert

I am thinking of starting a micro-podcast of “reveries” relevant for sharing with my students. Take a short quote from the text or from a favorite author, and then muse on it for less than five minutes. I recorded (garage band) one of these already. In the past it wa so easy to create a podcast using AnchorFM. But then that became Spotify for Podcasters, and suddenly that incredibly user friendly podcast editing studio went away. Which sucks.

So now I’m trying to figure out how best to do this, and my first shot was simply recording the content on Garage Band using my Ipad. The sound is good enough for what I’m attempting, but Spotify for Podcasters, I am finding, is not nearly as creator friendly as it should be.

Trying to figure it out, but I lament the loss of AnchorFM. It was awesome while it lasted.

I don’t know whether my students pay any attention to the required readings in this online English class that I teach. Or “teach.” I did not design the course. I do not get to choose the primary resources or readings for the course. All I get to do is participate in the discussion thread, the topics of which I do not get to choose. I get to post announcements, in which I am allowed to offer supplementary resources. I am quite sure students ignore these for the most part. And I get to grade and give feedback on their work.

Truth be told, it is this part, the feedback on their written work, where the real teaching in the class actually takes place. That is, if there is any real teaching in the class that takes place.

They insist that instructors have at least a masters degree in the subject area of the course they teach. I have a doctorate. Quite frankly, a below average high school English teacher who cared at all to do this job well could do it as well or better than most people who currently are doing it, I am quite sure.

The course seems intentionally designed to make it impossible for any student who completes the assignments—no matter how poorly—to fail. The course design makes it impossible to deliver a truly great course. But it probably also makes it impossible to deliver a complete clunker or disaster of a course.

Unless this is the only possible way for you to get a college education, I would not recommend it.

Walking the dogs into the woods today, I met an older gentleman who told me he was a pastor in town and was bringing some missionary visitors out to the woods later for some target shooting. He had permission from the owner of the land. Wanted to give the visitors from Egypt and Lebanon the rural Indiana experience, I guess. It dawned on me later, that though I am born and bred a rural Indiana person—a country boy fast approaching old age now at 54–I have never in my life fired a real gun. A toy Daisy BB gun given to me on my 11th birthday doesn’t really count, does it?