Drew A. Blank, Creative Director, Checking into Connected Courses

Took me all the way to the end of the post to get the Click and Clack from Car Talk… You guys are funny.

Todd Conaway here reporting in from the middle of the Arizona desert. I am a fortunate father and blessed husband. I like to bike and play Halo. I have been in the Grand Canyon a lot. I should play my guitar more and read more. I like to garden.

I have been a part of the Pedagogy First course offered out of MiraCosta Community College. Lisa Lane and her team there do amazing work. I also participated in ds106. In fact, I am currently the official #ds106 Athletic Club director and possibly the sole member of the #ds106 Athletic Club Running Team. It is a big responsibility and I take it very seriously.

Alan Levine and I are the #ds106 Athletic Club Mountain Biking Team. We are in a race this very Friday! We are looking for other members.

I get money for working with faculty at Yavapai College, also in the middle of Arizona. We are just about to start our Second Annual 9x9x25 Challenge here. It is very exciting. I am handing out “Official Race Bags” as we speak. Our faculty, like most, do remarkable and amazing things. So we figured if they share those things more often and in a meaningful way, we might not have to do so much stuff. You can see the writing they did last year by clicking here.

I am excited to participate in the Connected Courses class. I work mostly with faculty using an LMS. But, even back in 2009 we had some other ideas about how to connect things on the internet. It was fun. We used Blogger and blog roll widget to get student blogs connected to the “course hub.” We kept the site for several semesters of the class and it was cool to see all that student generated work in one place. More or less. As far as connecting goes, I am learning much.

A number of people I look up to are taking part in this class and I am excited to see where it goes.