Wednesday, October 18, 2006

New Courses

I received permission to teach some new classes next semester. They are Gay Films in the US, Gay Literature, and an online course of my choosing. As far as anyone knows, no one has done an online course at the university, so this will be groundbreaking here. The issue is that the university does not have the money to buy a program for doing an online program, which is probably the reason. However, someone had recommended Moodle to me. This is a freeware program for just such purposes. I downloaded the program, but it seems overwhelming now and I had not done a thing with it. Most likely, this will be a summer project and I will create the course for the fall semester.

In preparation for the Gay Film course, I have been collecting films and information about gay films. Who would have thought it would be so extensive. I have over 30 US films and another 30 plus of international ones ranging from Canada to China. For as many as possible, I have been collecting NY Times reviews and planning the course in my mind. This has kept me busy along with correcting the first papers that were turned in by my current Pop Culture class.

What I had not anticipated was that all of this research was going to decimate my bandwidth for the month. I started receiving e-mails from my Internet provider that I was getting close to using my maximum of 60 GB for the month and they were going to reduce me to 20% of normal service once I went over this limit. Hmmm….that is going to be a problem with an online course. I have a free website with the Internet provider that I have never used; however, if students are continually checking the online course, this is going to be a major issue of bandwidth abuse each month. Another hurdle to jump over, just when I thought I was coming in to the finish line.

If you do not see me for periods of time, it is because my bandwidth is too slow to post anything.

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