I've decided to use H5N1 as the focus of my examples for the course, drawing upon the last year's collection activities (from my H5N1 logfile).
It's likely that very few of the students will have heard of "H5N1", but that some will know about "the bird flu" or perhaps "avian influenza". I'd guess that none will have thought about the implications of a pandemic, and that almost none will have any knowledge of the 1918 pandemic. So there's vocabulary to develop, background to gather, searches to mount and manage, and information feelers to extend --as is the case with any research topic one undertakes.
I want to explore the blog as a means to manage my own process, and I'm toying with how to get the students to participate...
Does it make any sense to set up blogs for each of them, and have them use this medium instead of Web pages? I wonder... it's a lot of setup time, might strain the server, has backup risks, is largely unexplored as a strategy.
Posted by blackmer at December 21, 2004 10:54 AM