Day 13 (again): Janux at large scale

Just out of curiosity, I enrolled in the Beer course since that is the course that has gotten the most publicity. I figured it would have a lot of students in it, so I would get to see how Janux works scaled up. Well, there are indeed hundreds of people in there... but social? Apparently not.

There is a "What is Beer?" discussion board which has 312 posts in reply to the instructor's prompt... all just in one big list. The posts are not dated (?), but it looks like the oldest posts are at the top because the post at the top of the list has 22 comments in reply; presumably it was first. To see the most recent comments you would have to scroll (and scroll and scroll) on down to the bottom of that list.

And for interactivity? Well, there are 312 comments here. How many have "0 comments" in reply? That would apparently be 297 of them, 95% of the total. (I am basing this on doing a Control-F search in the browser window, since I certainly do not have the patience to scroll through the comments and count them one by one.)

How many have 1 comment? 8
2 comments? 1
3 comments? 4
4 comments? 1
22 comments? 1 (that would be the first/oldest comment at the top)

The crucial problems of how to distribute activity throughout a large discussion board is a topic that many online educators have discussed, and there are various solutions. It doesn't appear that Janux has taken any of that into account. At least Kerry is urging people to comment on each other's posts in his course design. Here - with 297 out of 312 comments apparently (?) having no interaction - I would guess both the course design and the software are working against the social interaction. I read somewhere that over 5000 people signed up for the open beer course. So, it looks like the usual MOOC hype: lots of people signing up, but hardly anybody participating in the social parts of the class (although they might indeed be watching videos and taking quizzes).

Day 13: Janux no longer working in Safari?

So, I thought I would give Safari a try this morning since I never really figured out which browser was best overall... but apparently Safari doesn't work anymore at all. I logged in, and was able to navigate through a couple of screens, but my Interpretation essay seems to have disappeared. Screenshot:

That is, the browser knows my essay is there (I can click on the link in the discussion list and go there), but the screen is all white where the essay should be.

So, I pressed refresh. That made the screen go all grey, and now I cannot navigate to anything anywhere - there is no functioning link or button of any kind on the page. Screenshot:

So I pressed refresh again. I got the little green loading man. And it's loading. And loading. And loading.

And still loading. So I'll try refresh again. Still just the little green guy loading. Since the only address I see in the browser address bar is https://janux.ou.edu I cannot try forcing it back to the home page or anything. So, I give up on Safari for today.

Let's try Chrome. Okay, I'm in. Recent Activity still broken on my profile page (last activity showing is January 19).  No comment on my Week 2 Essay (and no reply to the comment I left for the only other person who did an essay), and no comment on my Week 2 Resource (and no reply to the comment I left for the only other person who did a resource). No other essays for me to read and comment on, and no other resources.

From the "recent activity" stream for everyone (which does seem to include comments and replies, because I see our valiant T.A. replying to people's Introductions from back in Week 1), I noticed that someone whose name I don't recognize posted this comment: "My previous thoughts and notions of previous historians and explorers have been reinforced these past two weeks. Like I stated, I have always greatly admired these beginning scientists' bravery, but throughout this short time we have been in class by admiration has TREMENDOUSLY grown because of the new knowledge and information I am learning about them. Learning the specific details of their discovers, inventions, and processes to achieve these has already changed my perspective. History is certainly transformative and the more I learn about it, the more transformed I become----I look forward to the transformations this semester will bring!​"

Wow, that's some enthusiasm! I haven't seen any other contributions by this person so far. This person's recent activity consists of "so-and-so joined NextThought January 13 2014," and nothing else, but of course we know Recent Activity is broken, so that means nothing - her comment is listed in the recent activity stream for "everyone," but does not show up on the recent activity stream for her profile. What is "recent activity" supposed to be I wonder...? I am glad this other person is having such a transformative experience, and I would have enjoyed reading her posts about that. I checked the "about" part of her profile and found only this: "Empty Profile :( This user has not filled out their profile." So much for social.

But now I really am wondering what is going on: it sounds like this person is participating in the class, although I have seen none of this person's contributions anywhere, so I cannot comment on them (not that the person would ever know I commented...). Am I just somehow not seeing the things that people post? Oh wait, I think I get it: this person is probably a student in the for-credit class, and somehow this post ended up over in our not-for-credit area. I know it is possible for them to get here because the only other student who posted an essay and resource for Week 2 here in the not-for-credit section is actually a for-credit student who is cross-posting on purpose. So I'm guessing this person ended up over here by accident somehow, and maybe things really are going great over in the for-credit version of the class.

Anyway, I really do have to decide what to do this weekend, since this frustration is just not worth it. I guess I'll check back tomorrow one more time to see if anything happened in the essay or resource areas for Week 2. If there are no new essays or resources to read and/or no replies on my essay and resource, I'm going to stop wasting my time here and just read the books for class plus some more books in the history of science. And collecting more Latin sundials of course! As this Victorian sundial warns us, there is no time to waste: TEMPUS EDAX RERUM, "Time is the devourer of things."

January 25 email

A cheery email from Kerry; I wonder if it will have any effect on the non-participation in the not-for-credit version of the class. Kerry urges us to check back at our posts to see if people have left comments, but given that there is no easy way to do that, I don't think that is a very effective strategy for making the community come to life as he says in the email. I had decided that this would be a make-or-break weekend for me, so I am glad that Kerry's email might revive the dormant open section of the course. Fingers crossed.

Kerry's email below.

---

Dear students,

We are nearing the end of the 2nd week, and I want to let you all know that Brent and I are really enjoying your posts!   Your work investing time in writing thoughtful posts and in getting to know one another and discussing your take on the history of science is really what this course is all about.  That interaction is what transforms dry course materials into a living, breathing learning community.  I can't wait to see how you bring your own experiences and perspectives to bear on the Interpretation essays for Mesopotamian astronomy!

By now you are getting the hang of Janux and of the rhythm of the regular weekly assignments.  Remember that there's a place where Brent and I are leaving tips about Janux:  Go to the Discussions area and look for the History of Science to the Age of Newton / Forum.  Here's another tip:  Keegan Long-Wheeler has prepared six video tutorials about Janux on youTube.

Even more importantly, remember that you can check back at the Forum and read through the personal introductions that people have left there.  For example, if you find mine, you'll see why you often see me holding a coffee mug.  And check back as often as you like; many of us (myself included) will change or add to our introductions as the weeks go by.

The first assignments for next week's unit on ancient Egypt and the Aegean should be available shortly (if not already).  Remember that although each week officially starts on Tuesdays, with the Starting Assumptions assignment due on Tuesday nights, it's a great idea to get started early and to work ahead.  Why not complete up through the Week 3 Starting Assumptions and first Topic assignment this weekend?

Check out the blog of the History of Science Collections to see a link between the Rosetta Stone, which you'll encounter next week in the ancient Egypt assignment, and today's celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Mac.  If you happen to live in Norman, you can stop by the Collections to see a 1984 Mac, a Crossing Cultures exhibition featuring more than 150 rare books, as well as a lobby display celebrating the television series Sherlock. Read more on the Collections blog.

Check Brent's profile at Janux; every Sunday he will post "chat hours" for the coming week in his "Thoughts" section.  He is also available to show you around the exhibits here in the Collections, if you want to stop by.

We look forward to seeing you online this weekend!

Day 12: Still lonely in the labyrinth.

The "recent activity" stream for "everyone" (not sure just what that means - everyone in this class?), shows that our T.A. Brent is now diligently leaving comments for lots of people, but I wonder if they will ever see his comments since they will get no notification about it. I wonder, in fact, how many people are actually still participating. I posted my assignment for today in the online resource area and commented on the one other assignment I found there. I also posted a comment on the one other essay that someone had posted, although he had not commented on my essay. As I learned from his post, he is also enrolled in the for-credit course apparently, so perhaps he is doing all his commenting in the for-credit area; that would certainly be understandable since presumably it is less grim there than it is here in the open course.

So, as I said in yesterday's diary entry, there is simply no feeling of social here at all really. Between the lack of notifications and the apparently dwindling-to-non-existent participation in the open side of this course, this doesn't feel any different than the way I would work on my own, reading and writing in my blog about what I've learned.

In fact, it is worse than reading and blogging, because my blog is something I can share with other people in my online learning network (that's why I am crossposting here). In contrast, I cannot share anything inside the Janux walled garden at all with the outside world. Indeed, I don't think I can link to things even when I am inside Janux; at least, I have not been able to figure out if anything is directly linkable in there or not.

Of course, the argument made by Janux boosters is that because of this "unique" social software we should be willing to trade away the undeniable benefits of open learning. Based on the two weeks of this class so far, I would say that looks like the worst kind of devil's bargain. Instead of having Kerry's great learning materials available to anyone, any time on the open Internet, they are locked away ... for no good reason. Instead of having materials that can be indexed by search engines and thus discovered by others, they are unreachable and undiscoverable by others.

What a shame. The social aspects of the Janux so-called community would have to be enormous to convince me that such a trade-off is even worth considering. As it is, with Janux being so poorly designed (no notifications...? what were they thinking?), it seems to me a terrible shame that OU instructors have invested so much time and effort in developing materials to put inside the Janux walls instead of developing truly open resources.

In addition, I should note that my "Recent Activity" is still broken; the most recent item showing is still the old assignment dated January 19. None of my activity since then is showing up, which means I have little faith in the "recent activity" stream that I guess is supposed to be the key to how I am supposed to interact with others in the course in the absence of actual notifications.

Finally, for what it's worth, I had asked about notifications all the way back in September when we were first allowed to log on to Janux to look around; here is a screenshot of the "thought" I added back then in response to someone named Nathalie who works for NextThought. I never got a reply to this comment, presumably because Natalie never knew that I left the comment . . . since she didn't get a notification about it.

Week 2 Online Resource: The Zodiac and Early Astronomy

For my essay this week, I cited an article that I found, and I would like to provide here the notes I took about the article. It's an older article, but that means it is available online for anyone to read; I found it when looking for Google searches relating to Babylonian zodiac, filtering my results for the edu domain only:

Title: The Zodiac and Early Astronomy
Authors: Dewdney, S. H.
Journal: Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 25 (1931): 400-408. Provided by the NASA Astrophysics Data Section.

Dewdney begins with a discussion of the precession of the equinoxes. His hope is that if the original zodiacal seasons can be determined, it would also allow us to determine their time origin. We cannot rely on physical evidence to date the origins of the zodiac, because the physical evidence has simply not survived. The famous Denerah zodiac of Egypt, for example, dates at the earliest to 1300 BCE.

Indirect evidence, however, is provided by the zodiacal symbols themselves ( ♈ ♉ ♊ ♋ ♌ ♍ ♎ ♏ ♐ ♑ ♒ ♓ ), where the author thinks we can detect something of an evolution over time. The author sees Semitic, Egyptian and Greek elements at work, spread out over time, and he prefers the Babylonian origin, building on the legacy of Sumerian astronomy.

To establish the time period, he first focuses on what we call Capricorn (represented as half-goat and half-fish, the "Goat-Fish" of the Babylonians), Aquarius, and Pisces as belonging "to a great celestial sea occupying a quarter of the heavens" (406), with Libra as a balance suggesting the balance of the autumnal equinox. He links that celestial sea to the weather on earth: "The aqueous constellations suggest connection with an extensive rainy season such as visits the Indus and Ganges valleys in the track of the monsoons." For Libra to be in that position suggests an origin around 2000 BCE (407).

As for the vernal equinox, he contends that this was in Taurus (the "Steer of Heaven" of the Babylonians), and he notes that the "earliest recorded name for the zodiac is Pidnush Shame = The Furrow of Heaven, ploughed by the Bull of Light" (407). For Taurus to coincide with the vernal equinox would mean a time period between 2000 BCE and 4000 BCE, "probably about 2900 BCE" (408).

I'm not sure that we can ever be certain with this precarious interpretation of the symbols (i.e. contending that a "sea in heaven" corresponds to rain on earth), and the author himself confesses ignorance more than anything else in his closing sentences: "The zodiacal problem has been as yet practically untouched, in spite of the rich and varied field of research it offers and the historical challenge it presents. Until it is dealt with adequately our knowledge of early astronomy will remain a blank" (408). I wonder what progress has been made in the 80 years since this article was written!

Regardless of the author's inability to provide dates for the development of the zodiac, I found the information presented in this paper to be fascinating. I had no idea that we knew so little of just where the symbols of the zodiac come from, and I am impressed by the shared signs among the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks. You can see the shared signs laid out clearly in a handy chart in the Wikipedia article about the Zodiac.

In the same way that many people are surprised that the names for the letters of the Greek alphabet are not Greek at all but Semitic, reflecting the Semitic origin of the alphabet (compare Greek alpha and Hebrew alef, Greek beta and Hebrew bet, etc.), I was surprised to learn not just that the science of the zodiac comes from Babylon, but the actual signs and symbols themselves also come from Sumerian and Babylonian culture. So, while people today might think they know nothing at all about Babylonian culture, they actually do... because they know the signs of the zodiac! We may given those signs Latin names now, but their origins are neither Roman nor Greek, but more ancient, reaching back into ancient Mesopotamia and the cultures of Sumer and Babylon.

The image below shows Capricorn, the goat-fish, in stained glass from England, circa 1400 (Wikimedia Commons):

Day 11: yep, so-called Recent Activity is broken

After posting my interpretation essay last night, I was really curious if that would cause my Recent Activity to refresh, but it did not. So, I have to conclude that the Recent Activity is just broken. That would be bad enough, and in the absence of any notification system, it is a disaster. You cannot get notifications to stay in touch with people who comment or reply to you, and you cannot even get in touch with people yourself by bookmarking profiles and looking at people's Recent Activity stream. That makes the prospects of carrying on with the social aspects of this class pretty grim.

I don't know if Recent Activity is supposed to include comments and replies, but in the absence of any other notification system, it sure seems logical that comments and replies would be displayed there. Yet even if comments and replies are omitted, I have submitted 7 different assignments for this class, plus an Introduction post. Of those submissions, 2 involved creating a new discussion, and 6 involved adding a comment to an existing discussion created by the instructor. Only one of those submissions shows up in my recent activity, and it is not the most recent; it is an assignment from January 19. Since January 19, I have created one new discussion and posted comments in two existing discussions (along with all the comments and replies I have made to other people's submissions).

So, here's where things stand — No notifications. Recent Activity stream is broken. At this point, I don't know what to do. I cannot understand how we are supposed to make this into a social learning experience if the software is not designed to promote our interaction.

Here is my so-called Recent Activity; screenshot taken this morning, January 24, showing a last activity date of January 19. Conclusion: Recent Activity is broken.

Day 10: loving the zodiac

So, I just posted an interpretation essay for Week 2 (last week I did an online resource, but not an interpretation essay). I had so much fun writing it because I had been thinking about the zodiac and ecliptic and enjoying my new knowledge all day long today! I'm not quite sure where this will take me, but learning about sundials and the zodiac has really clicked for me, and it is a topic I hope to keep exploring all semester long. Since both sundials and representations of the zodiac are found throughout all the historical periods being covered by this course, I feel confident that I have latched on to something really useful, a thread that will lead me through the Janux labyrinth.

And a lonely labyrinth it is. The more I think about this total lack of notifications, the more discouraged I am about how this course will develop over time. I'm doing fine because I've got my blog here; I can take a look at my assignment posts and get a sense of progress that is very encouraging. But where is all the social encouragement that Janux is supposed to making possible...? I wrote in detail yesterday about the lack of notifications, and I noticed today that Brent, our T.A., had left many comments at the Introductions board. But will anybody see the comments he has left for them...? Time online is a precious thing; none of us can afford to squander that resource. By collecting my assignments here in my blog, I feel good about the time I am investing. I do not feel good about time invested in comments and replies at Janux, although without comments and replies, how will we ever achieve the social integration that is essential to real learning...? I applaud Janux for their emphasis on the social dimensions of learning, but I find the software to be all the more depressing for just that reason. Social? Really? I don't think so.

So, I would gladly spend another half hour or so leaving comments and interacting with other people at the course, but there's nothing going on apparently - at least, I can't tell if there is a conversation I am missing out on. I guess it just means I will go research some more sun dials!

Update: This sundial led me to Francis Bacon... what an adventure! Details about just where this Latin motto comes from in the Bestiaria blog post - it is indeed Francis Bacon at work, along with the ingenious maker of the sundial.

TEMPUS FUGIT     AUGEBITUR SCIENTIA

Time Flies    Knowledge Will Increase

(Wikimedia Commons: Belgian sundial)

Week 2: Interpretation Essay

My main interest throughout this week has been the zodiac, and I would contend that the Babylonians who gave us the zodiac were surely scientists. My previous understanding of the zodiac was entirely non-scientific, but now — especially after having struggled through the pages in Michael Crowe's Theories of the World devoted to the astronomy that led to the zodiac — I have to confess both my ignorance of how the zodiac really works (but I did try to understand!) and my absolute amazement that the ancient Babylonians were able to conceive of extra-terrestrial space in such a complex way. As I understand it, the Babylonian astronomers around the year 1000 BCE had already divided the ecliptic up into twelve zones to create something like a celestial map. I am very glad to say that I now understand the ecliptic, even if the zodiac itself is still beyond me!

For people who did not get a chance to read those pages in Crowe, he walks us through a geocentric understanding of the motion of the sun and the moon, starting with the notion of a starry vault which rotates around the earth on the earth's polar axis, so that for us Polaris is a fixed star, while the other stars rise and set. But then to understand the sun's path we need to conceive of the ecliptic, and thank goodness Crowe told us to think of an ant walking slowly down the side of a spinning basketball. So far, so good. I understand the ecliptic now, and it is very helpful in my quest to really understand how sundials work! Plus now I understand the solstices and the equinoxes, and I finally understand why it is so darn cold in the winter.

But then: oh no, here comes the zodiac, which is this astronomical space extending on either side of the ecliptic such that the sun, moon and the planets move within this space, allowing their movements to be charted and predicted (science!). Crowe tells us to imagine the zodiac like a belt that is unwrapped and laid out flat, and then we can chart the moon's path through the houses of the zodiac. At that point, my brain explodes. It's a very pretty chart, but I no longer have the ant on the basketball to help me. I am lost! Crowe's subsequent charts using the zodiac, like the chart showing the difference between the draconic and sidereal periods of the moon, completely baffled me.

But the Babylonians were not baffled. Not only did they understand the zodiac... they discovered it! Invented it! Whatever you want to call it, they did it, and I would declare it a scientific event.

It is also a mysterious event because of the many gaps in our historical reconstruction. The origins of the signs of the zodiac, for example, which are still used today, are lost in antiquity. I found a fascinating article — "The Zodiac and Early Astronomy" by S. H. Dewdney (Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, 1931) — which provides an overview of the different theories as to the possible origins of those familiar zodiacal signs.

♈ ♉ ♊   ♋ ♌ ♍ ♎ ♏ ♐ ♑ ♒ ♓ 

So, the signs are familiar while the scientific concepts are formidable, and the origins of both are lost in time. Over the past thousands of years, I suspect there have been many people like myself who "know" the zodiac (that is, we recognize the signs and find meaning in them) but without understanding the science behind it. No surprise: the science is hard! But the signs themselves are beautiful and suggestive, and they have been part of diverse art traditions for many centuries. So, even though I am defending Babylonian science, I will finish with some art, sharing an item I found in the Wikimedia Commons area devoted to the zodiac and its signs.

This lovely image shows the labors of the seasons, along with the signs of the zodiac over the course of a year. Isn't it gorgeous? It is dated to around the year 1400 and comes from the Berlin State Library. I like the way it unites the everyday experiences of people at work with the astronomical dimension of our world in the skies above us. I think that if the ancient Babylonians could have seen this work of art, they would have appreciated it too!

(Faltkalender, circa 1400)

(I chose this personal style of essay because I am still hoping against hope that Janux will be a place for people to really get to know each other, person to person, in order to share in a social learning experience.)

Sundial: Dies nostri quasi umbra

Inspired by the tradition of the zodiac that is part of this week's focus on ancient astronomy, I chose to write about a sundial that is decorated with the signs of the zodiac! See the Bestiaria blog post for details.

Bestiaria Latina:

Dies nostri quasi umbra

Day 9: effects of no notifications

I've returned for a quick visit tonight - I did some reading in Lindberg last night which I really enjoyed, and I watched the video about the Collection's oldest object (very cool), and then I posted my quick reflections about that in the discussion board. My motivation to participate in the discussion boards is really low, though - with the lack of notifications, what can we really expect there?

I am discouraged to make my own posts because I don't expect they will lead to any real dialogue. Most of the things I have posted so far have received no comments; I think I got one comment on my Week 1 posting that included two books, but that is the only comment I've received. At least, I think so - how would I know? Without notifications, I have no way to be sure. I cannot even check using my recent activity stream because that is incorrect and incomplete: my so-called recent activity shows only one item total out of the six assignments that I've posted in different discussion boards, nor does my Introduction post show up, and there is also no sign of the comments I've made on other people's posts (I've followed Kerry's instructions to leave a couple of comments on existing posts when I add my own post to a discussion board).

I am also discouraged to leave comments for others because, without notifications, I have little confidence that they will see my comment. I did leave one comment for someone which led to a reply, but I think that is the only reply there has been to one of my comments... although again, I am not sure. Without notifications, how would I know? It's very frustrating to leave comments when there is really no expectation that the other person will know you have left them a comment.

Lack of conversation is apparently the norm: at the Introductions board, there are 37 Introduction posts. Of those, 27 have no comments at all. There are comments on 10 of them, but only on 5 of those is there a reply from the original poster; presumably the other people who did get comments have no idea that they got comments. Because... without notifications... how would they? I'm also not sure what is going on there. At one point we were told that this Introductions board was for both the for-credit and not-for-credit versions of the class, and I did indeed meet some for-credit students at that discussion board. But where are the rest of the Introductions? If there are 50 people in the for-credit class, I would expect they would all be there, even if participation is low (almost non-existent apparently) for the not-for-credit students.

In my own classes, I have opted for blogs rather than discussion boards exactly because of the dilemma posed by the discussion board format. With a blog, at least you can quickly see what is going on, and you also have the satisfaction of watching your own work accumulate over the semester (as I can see my assignments here because I am crossposting them in this blog). With discussion boards, your contributions get scattered hither and thither, and you cannot even easily find them later. Being scattered would be worth it if those contributions were part of an actual discussion, but with the poor design of the Janux software, discussion is very difficult, and this is not even a large class. I shudder to think what is going on in the classes much larger than this.

I never thought I would say this... but it makes me miss the Coursera discussion boards, where at least you could quickly see at a glance who had posted and keep track of the latest comments quickly and easily. Not possible here at Janux.

Sigh.

Week 2: Origins of Ancient Astronomy

​Wouldn't it have been great if Stonehenge came with inscriptions...? I wonder what we would make of Mesopotamian culture without their discovery of cuneiform writing! I would definitely like to learn more about the origins of the zodiac, and I also very interested in the intersection between divination and astronomy. In the Lindberg book, I was really intrigued by his observations about Babylonian astronomy, and he put a big emphasis on the importance of divination in the development of what we would now call science. That makes sense, though: much of what we want science to do for us is to tell us about the future, to accurately predict (on the basis of scientific laws) what will result if we do (or don't do) such-and-such. That quest to know about the future prompted the practice of divination in cultures all over the world, but now we look to scientists to tell us about the future, like predicting the weather tomorrow, predicting our health if we undergo a medical treatment, predicting the future or our environment based on scientific claims about global warming, etc.

As for the zodiac, just this weekend I found a lovely inclusion of the zodiac animals in one of the sundials I have been working on (inspired by this class to do so!). So here it is as an image to include here... from ancient Mesopotamia to a Tyrolian sundial!

Sundial: SOLI DEO GLORIA

I just added a new sundial to my tiny but growing collection! See the Bestiaria Latina blog post for details about the Latin motto and its meaning.

Bestiaria Latina Sundials:

SOLI DEO GLORIA

I am also really enjoying Pinterest for this, especially the widgets! To make an individual pin widget, just click "share" on the pin page. For a board widget, use the Widget Builder.

Day 8: lack of oomph!

I can really relate to my students tonight, the ones who are taking classes on top of working full-time. It's Tuesday evening, and I really should do some work for History of Science tonight, but I am lacking in oomph to do that.

I think Week 2 has started, but I did not receive an email about that, so I am not 100% sure.

Much more serious problem: no notifications of any kind regarding discussion board participation. Man, that is SO frustrating! I posted a lot of comments and replies once the system finally allowed me to do that... but I have no way of knowing if anyone has posted a reply to one of my comments so that I could participate in an actual back-and-forth dialogue.

There is a "recent activity" stream... but it does not show activity that is specifically of interest to me. I can filter the stream to "my contacts," but that is still not the same as knowing about replies to my comments or replies to the discussion board item I posted in the Week 1 Online Resource area.

Moreover, I am really not confident about the "recent activity" stream since when I check my own recent activity, it is completely inaccurate, showing almost none of my recent activity at all. So, when I go to the profile pages of other people and click recent activity, am I really seeing their recent activity? Since my listing is not complete, I doubt that theirs is either.

Update: Okay, I did my starting assumptions (it was fun to do: Darmok!), and I also commented on some other people's starting assumptions, and then I also commented on two of the online resource assignments that people had shared for Week 1; nobody had done any commenting there. It doesn't look like a lot of participation in the not-for-credit part of the class (will it pick up...? or it is going to dwindle even more...?), and I fear that the lack of notifications will really have a negative impact on people's participation.

Week 2: Starting Assumptions... Mesopotamia!

A nice coincidence! The ancient Near East is also the topic in my Myth-Folklore class in Week 2! So, in answer to Kerry's questions, I know something about the ancient epic of Gilgamesh, and that is what the students are reading in my Myth-Folklore class. And of course I love ... LOVE ... that Star Trek episode of Darmok: kudos to Kerry for mentioning it in the video!!!

In terms of Mesopotamian science, my only knowledge is from a book I read by Dick Teresi, Lost Discoveries: The Multicultural Roots of Modern Science from the Babylonians to the Maya. It's a "history lite" type of book which would definitely not pass muster as a textbook for this class, but it was very engaging to read, and I especially liked the way it exposed the real lack of interest by the Greeks (and also the Romans) in computational mathematics, something which the Egyptians and also the people of Babylonia were experts in apparently. If you asked Plato what six times eight is, he would have been baffled! So, from Dick Teresi I gained learned that the way the Greeks pursued mathematics was quite different from that of their ancient neighbors. I'm guessing that mathematics will be part of the astronomical story that we will learn about this week, so hopefully I will have something more than Dick Teresi to rely on for this bit of knowledge!

The image below is from the Memory-Alpha.org wiki page for Darmok:

Day 7: Power of public!

Not sure I will be doing class work today (Happy Martin Luther King Day to all!), but I did want to include this Google+ post about a really cool thing that happened thanks to my having left a comment about the "ultima latet" sundial over at Wikimedia. PUBLIC: it is powerful!!!

Sundial: VOLAT IRREVOCABILIS · ULTIMA LATET

I am clearly going to have too much fun with this sundial project. For the second post, I picked a really beautiful sundial from the southern Tyrol, and then I realized that the transcription of the motto at Wikimedia is surely incorrect! So, I explain in the blog post what the transcription must surely be.

Bestiaria Blog Post:

VOLAT IRREVOCABILIS · ULTIMA LATET

Plus... that gave me an excuse to write to Michel Lalos. He has the single most amazing website of sundial photographs — Albums de cadrans solaires — that I have found anywhere, and he also repeats the incorrect transcription. I am hoping that he will be interested in having a corrected transcription, and perhaps he might also let me include his photograph of this sundial in my blog post because his photo is really lovely.

Fingers crossed: I will be so excited if I hear back from him! Meanwhile, I already heard from ManfredK at Wikimedia, who alerted me to this lovely photograph which he contributed:

Week 1: Shape of the Earth Video Response

As Kerry points out in his Shape of the Earth video, there can be a great diversity of what we would call scientific knowledge (or lack thereof) in any given culture at any given time. So, for example, there can be flat-earthers who denied that the earth is round, or - more controversially even today - there can be climate-change-deniers or evolution-deniers today, etc. etc. We can probably never expect uniformity of scientific belief in any given culture exactly because science itself is always in motion, as Kosta points out, and we are never going to be aware of our own ignorance, so to speak.

As my contribution to this topic, I wanted to share two book recommendations. Both of these books provide a cultural and historical context for two scientific phenomena that we learn about as children and take for granted: the existence of dinosaurs as attested in the fossil record and the existence (if we can call it that!) of the number zero.

The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times (2000, reissued  2011) by Adrienne Mayor

This is a book that explores in great detail the ancient Greek and Roman interpretations of the fossil bones that they discovered. It's a wonderful topic, and Mayor works with all kinds of textual evidence and also with visual evidence, such as this Greek vase painting shown on the cover of the first edition of the book (I was sad to see they changed the cover for the reissue in 2011; I liked the old cover so much better):

I should add that Adrienne Mayor came to speak at OU back in 2001 (I think that is the right year), and she has to be one of the most fascinating people that I have ever met!

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife

What could be more obvious than zero... right? Wrong! This book is a wonderful overview of the long and slow discovery of zero! By the end of the book you will feel very smart that you grasp the number zero and understand it easily... but you shouldn't feel too smug about that: by seeing how long and how hard it was to come to grips with the idea of zero, it makes you realize that there are some other things that later generations will consider totally obvious that we have somehow failed to see at all!

A mathematician friend told me that there are better books about zero out there, but this is the one that I happened to read and I enjoyed it very much. If someone who knows more about history of math can comment here on that and recommend more "zero" books to read, that would be super! :-)

Day 6: end of week 1... and comments are FINALLY working!!!

Today is Sunday, so it is the end of the first week of class. I've actually managed to do work for the class almost every day (I am a fan of a little bit every day rather than big bursts of work just once or twice a week), so that's good. The course content itself is fascinating; my frustrations with the Janux software are enormous.

I did manage to create a discussion today, sharing my Week 1 Online Resource: Sundials assignment. That will be a good way for me to find out if I net NOTIFICATIONS for comments left at a discussion that I started.

Notifications and activity. So far, I have received no email notifications of any kind, which seems to me a real problem. The Janux software is so unappealing that I am not likely to just browse and see if anybody has replied to me, so a real notification system is badly needed! There is apparently an activity stream for the course, but it is pretty much useless since it just lists everything, rather than separating out activity in general from actual notifications. I see that I can filter my stream by contacts, so I guess one of my tasks today is to add to my contacts in order to filter my stream.

Commenting. But my first task is to figure out if I have better luck with Chrome for leaving comments. I learned yesterday that I apparently have to use Firefox to view the videos, but I got an error message when trying to leave a comment. So, today I am going to use Chrome and see what kind of luck I have leaving comments for people. So, I am off to try this task. I will report back after I am done.

OMG: AT LAST!

The software actually seems to be working - no error messages, no disappearing reply boxes, no persistent comment texts (all problems I've experienced in the past week every time that I tried to comment).....

I can comment now! Three comments in a row - no error messages.

MIRABILE VISU.

I can finally participate in the class like a normal online student. Whoo-hoo!

Off to go comment some more...

And it's still working. I left a half-dozen comments for the people I found whom I know at the course, and I ran into no glitches. I'm scared to say that too loudly since the Janux gremlins will probably come get me... but so far, so good.

This is the first time I have been able to participate in the class: VERY HAPPY.

Week 1 Online Resource: Sundials (of course!)

For my online SUNDIAL resource, I decided to create two things: a meta-resource of sundial links at Diigo and a blog post compiling information about a specific sundial and its Latin inscription. I was inspired to work on sundials because the Stonehenge video really got me thinking about sundials; see my discussion contribution about Stonehenge for more about that: Stonehenge and Sundials.

DIIGO SUNDIAL LINKS

Diigo is a free social bookmarking service. It allows you to create bookmarks, access them online, and also share them. You can also download your bookmarks in order to have a local copy for back-up. So, I've bookmarked some sundial resources, labeled them (JanuxHSCI sundials) and I am now sharing my Diigo sundials link list here!

The main reason to use Diigo instead of just typing out a list of links to post here is that this Diigo list is DYNAMIC. That is really important! It means that if/when I add new links (which I hope to do; I am very excited about this project), you will see the latest links, and I can also clear out old links that go bad. I can annotate the links, too, as I work my way through them and learn more about them, and you will see my annotations. None of that is possible with a static list that I might type out here. Moreover, if I type out some list here inside Janux, I imagine it will be seen by maybe two or three people (???) and then thrown out at the end of the class (???). Rather than creating something with inherently limited value like that, I prefer to use a tool like Diigo to make my work more useful to myself and to others, both now and over time!

Here are the kinds of links I have included in my Diigo list (appx. 50 links at this time):

• Wikipedia articles (I am a big fan of Wikipedia, both for information and also as an image source)
• Online books from Internet Archive
• Online books from Google Books
• Useful websites, with a preference given to .edu websites

BESTIARIA LATINA SUNDIALS

I've got a long-running Latin blog called Bestiaria Latina, and I add new content to the blog based on topics of interest. So, I have always been interested in sundials and their Latin mottoes, but I never did a series of blog posts about that... but I have started a sundial series now, thanks to this class!

As my first item in the sundial series, I have posted about a lovely sundial from Cornwall, and I will try to add one or two sundials every week. The post has a picture of the sundial, the Latin inscription and an English translation, along with some commentary and additional references. I am really glad that this class prompted me to start this series. I was looking for a new content series to add to my blog this year, and I think sundials will be wonderful! They are a beautiful combination of text and object, and I hope during this class to learn more about the astronomical science of sundials as well.

Pereunt et Imputantur

Random Thought: Open Science

While out of my walk just now (brrrrr... I have a rule to not go walking when it is below freezing - and it was just 33 degrees, but sunny!), I thought about one of the proverb posters that I did last year and how it is important to the issue of openness and sharing (i.e. the lack of openness and sharing) that really concerns me about Janux and its walled garden. That theme of open access is also important to science as a whole, too, of course.

So, this poster, which is made with a medieval Latin bit of rhyming verse, shows that the need for open knowledge is not just a modern concern. The medieval monks thought about that too, dependent as they were on the sharing of manuscripts! So here is the poster, and below I've included the Latin text and an English translation (for more information and additional posters like this, see my Proverb Laboratory blog post):

When knowledge is hidden away, it rots;
when it is shared publicly, it grows.

Latin: Condita tabescit, vulgata scientia crescit.

Condita (hidden away) tabescit (it rots),
vulgata (publicly shared) scientia (knowledge) crescit (grows).

This is a so-called Leonine hexameter, characteristic of the Middle Ages. The classical Roman poets also used hexameters like this, but they avoided the use of rhyme, unlike the medieval poets who loved rhyme, as you can see from the internal rhyme here: tabescit-crescit. I also love rhyming Latin verse, which is why, as a general rule, I prefer medieval verse to classical. :-)

Day 5: Software reporting

I'm back to try again with Janux today. Here is a screenshot that shows what happens when I try to view a video and transcript; the video play button is off my screen to the left, and no matter how much I widen the browser window, there is nothing I can do. There is no way to get the video viewer on the screen completely. This is Chrome on a Mac. I have a very wide monitor, so that is not the problem - but I have all this black blank space on the right, and the video player is scrolled just enough off the left that I cannot click play (click on image below to see larger view).

So, I'll go try in Safari. Well, that doesn't work - the little green man just dances and dances and dances, but the site will not load.

Firefox is my last option, so I will go back to that. Okay, it looks like Firefox is the browser to use. Admittedly, I never use Firefox for anything anymore, but if that is the browser Janux is optimized for (???), then I guess that is what I will use. Mission One accomplished: I was able to watch the Flat Earth video and take notes. And no, I did not take notes inside Janux. The thought did not even cross my mind. Not only do I not trust the software, I have no clue why they would be useful to me or anyone else trapped inside Janux when I can just take notes with a real blogging tool, searchable, linkable, findable, and EASY TO USE. Like Blogger.

I'll add updates to this post if/when I run into problems. I guess it's better to say "when" since this software experience is consistently unacceptable. If it were not for my OVERWHELMING interest in Kerry's course, I would not bother with this since it is clearly not ready for prime time yet. And honestly, if this is only going to work in Firefox on the Mac, they should tell people that, but I haven't seen anything about browser recommendations anywhere, and given how confusing the navigation is, I'm not even sure where I would go to look.

Update: Problems with Screen Width also in Firefox

So, even in Firefox I am having real problems with screen width. I went to the Introductions Forum area because I had not done an introduction yet. Yet I have to view that window at over 1000 pixels in order to participate - and that is way way way too wide a screen in which to comfortably read or write. Yet when I narrow the width of the window to something more comfortable, like say 600 or even 750 pixels, it scrolls off the screen. The minimum width is apparently 1050 pixels, even in Firefox:

For software that claims to be social, it is apparently doing everything it can to make me not want to participate here... even though I am one of the most eagerly social online people you will find at OU. Sigh.

Update: I went to meet people at the Introductions forum now that I am feeling confident Firefox is the browser I need to use. Very excited to see a former student there, so I wrote her a long comment (which I was smart enough to save in a text file, knowing the problems with this software) and then the little green man danced and danced and danced for a very long time, and in the end I got this error message:

So, once again, I leave in defeat. I do not understand how this software could have been tested in the fall and still be failing to meet even the most basic level of usability. I did save the comment in a text file (thank goodness), but I have no patience left to try to leave the comment using other browsers. I'll try again tomorrow I guess.

Kerry, if you are reading this, I don't know what to do. I agree with you that the social aspects of this class are the most important thing, but I cannot figure out how to participate with this software. I've saved the comment for Casey Jo when I feel brave enough to try again. Do I have to use a separate browser for everything: Firefox for watching video with transcript, Chrome for leaving comments (but even then I had the bouncing and disappearing reply box)...?

HELP!!!!!

Week 1: Shape of the Earth notes

Fascinating video! I would embed it here but the video is apparently not at YouTube for embedding... and I have to ask: why not??? If Janux is all about "open content" as they claim, why can't I share the video using YouTube's excellent embedding options...??? Hmmmm.... Anyway, here are my notes as I watch the video:

News of Washington Irving's role in modern storytelling about Columbus is new to me! I like Kerry's term for it: "mischievous nonsense."

Plato, Aristotle, Dante: pretty illustrious company for belief in the round earth! The curve of the earth's shadow sound's like a pretty good piece of evidence that should have been obvious to anyone who saw it!

These illustrations in the books are just beautiful, and I know that Kerry has digitized and put many of these books online for us to use. Is there a list of links somewhere here in the course website that will let me see links to all these images so that I can click. I would also love to read some of the Latin text, like in this wonderful set of illustrations for the effects of a lunar eclipse!

That's another topic where there is so much great overlap between mythological storytelling and the phenomena studied by scientists: eclipses. My favorite is the Hindu myth of the demon Rahu. Maybe I will write about that for my discussion contribution here!

(Rahu poster at Exotic India Arts)

Day 6: A New Sundial Series at Bestiaria

I decided to take a break from the Janux software this evening and work on sundials since I had so much fun with the sundial item that I wrote about in my second assignment for class. In fact, I've decided to start a new series on sundials with Latin inscriptions over at my Bestiaria Latina blog. Here's the one I wrote up tonight... something that would not have happened without this class to prompt me! :-)

See the blog post for details about the image and the inscription, including an English translation:

Pereunt et Imputantur

Day 4: Catching Up

I decided to take yesterday (Wednesday) off because of all the frustrations I had with the software on Tuesday. The fact that the course CONTENT is so incredibly appealing only made the software frustration worse! But I took a day off and am ready to get back into things. I will update this post throughout the evening as I proceed.

Organizing. I decided to separate out my actual assignments from these records of my interaction with the software, so I created a separate assignments label and diary label for posts, and also an email label to record observations about the great emails that Kerry is sending out. Yes, NextThought has a pseudo-sort-of-blogging tool ("Thoughts"), but I have zero desire to try to use that. I want something permanent, something public, and something that I can organize in a useful way. Blogs work for me. I cannot figure out what Janux is supposed to do for me as a journaling tool. What I have seen so far does not impress me.

Email. I wrote up a post about Kerry's EXCELLENT email of today. It really revived my spirits and made me feel ready to start studying again!

Video Timing Out. Terrible video time-outs. I am getting time-outs as I try to watch the video. Very frustrating. About every five seconds or so it is having to stop and buffer. Is there a way to download the videos (I don't care how long it takes), and then I could view them without being interrupted every few seconds...? At least now I have the transcript, but I really want to WATCH the video too.  (pause) Time-outs lasting longer now. This one is lasting for about a minute...  Sigh.  I will go read the transcript while I wait; I have that open in a different window. (pause) WOW, the transcript was fascinating and I did take notes. I feel very badly not to have seen the video. It is still buffering even now after I finished reading the transcript and taking notes. Buffering ad infinitum apparently; here's where it timed out and just kept buffering non-stop:

Discussion Board. I find it impossible to compose anything of real length in the discussion board because the editing screen is HUGE - it must 1000 pixels wide on my screen (if I make the browser window smaller it just scrolls off the screen). Can I make it a more normal size somehow? Well, I just compose in my blog, and then copy and paste. But for the replies, I type in the editing box, and then something really strange happens. After I add my reply, I still see the editing box, and it still has my text in it. I don't understand: why do I see my reply, which I think (???) is published, but also see the text in the editing box...? Screenshot below. I am trying to use Chrome on a Mac. My published reply (is it published?) can be seen below the editing box... which still has my reply in it!

I want to leave a reply for someone else, so I click reply, but no new box comes up, just the box with my existing reply. Argh!

So, I navigate completely away from the page; I go to lessons, then choose 1.3 Stonehenge, and enter the discussion area again, and the reply box with my reply to Annie is STILL floating on the screen (now it has moved position) - so how can I even leave a reply for someone else...? Screenshot:

I give up. There is someone else I really do want to reply to, but I cannot figure out how to do that and I don't want my reply to Annie to disappear because I type over it in the only reply box I see on the screen. This is BEYOND FRUSTRATING. I agree with Kerry: the life of this course should be our interactions with each other, but the discussion board does not work. 

I was going to spend some serious time on the course tonight, but I give up. I will try again this weekend. The problem here is the software; I am really disappointed. So much for good intentions to spend a lot of time interacting with people in the course tonight. Sigh. 

Week 1 Discussion: Stonehenge

Unfortunately I was not able to view the video (timing out on me, argh!), but I was able to read the transcript (does everybody know how to access the transcript? it sure saved me tonight since the video kept timing out) - so my contribution to the discussion will be based on just reading the transcript. I was so excited that Kerry focused on one of my favorite topics: the constellations as stories! In the mythology course I teach, in fact, students have done some great class projects where they work with the stories traditionally associated with the named constellations. Here are some free public domain books at Google Books about the constellations and their stories if you are interested in that kind of thing!

As Kerry described the way that Stonehenge might have been used to "read" the motion of the sky, it immediately made me think of sun dials and how they work. I am really fascinated by sun dials as works of art and even as works of literature! I don't know if that is a topic we will be addressing in this class, but it is something that I enjoy. I'm intimidated by the armillary sphere (the idea of imagining the motion of the earth against the backdrop of the constellations in three-dimensional space over time is so confusing to me!), but a sun dial is somewhat easier to understand because for that I only have to understand the earth and the sun... which is still a stretch for me, but I can do that more easily!

As a contribution today, let me share a beautiful sun dial and inscription from Prinsenhof (Prince's Court) in Groningen. Here is a webpage about the sundial, and it is also the source of the image below:

If you Google the Latin inscription (iambic), it is a good way to find lots of pictures of the sun dial and to learn more about it. Here is the Latin:

TEMPUS PRAETERITUM NIHIL, FUTURUM INCERTUM,
PRAESENS INSTABILE, CAVE NE PERDAS HOC TUUM

Here is what it means:

Time past (is) nothing, the future (is) uncertain, the present (is) unstable, take care so that you do not lose this (time which is) yours.

Isn't that cool? Sun dial inscriptions are one of my favorite genres of Latin poetry. It is a shame that Stonehenge did not come with an inscription! :-)

Week 1 Notes: Stonehenge (video transcript)

Oh, now I really do feel bad to not see the video: in the transcript, Kerry is describing one of my very favorite mythology topics of all time: the stories of the constellations!!! I would love to see the book pages he is describing in the video.

New word for the day: orrery.

(Meanwhile, as I take these notes, nothing is happening; the video has timed out completely I guess.)

Reading about the use of Stonehenge megaliths as a kind of armillary sphere to measure celestial motion, I wonder if we will also discuss sun dials in this course, a MUCH beloved topic of mine because of the beautiful literature of sun dial inscriptions!!!

I also realize with great pleasure how the Latin I have studied for so many years is a ticket to delightful places, because Chorea Gigantum just makes me smile! I am glad to make myself available as a Latin reference person for the class... if there were a practical way to do something like that!

And as the transcript ends with this question - What stories do you want to hear and tell about Stonehenge? - I realize that while on the one hand Kerry's class and my own class are so different, TRULY different (I am not a scientist and I do not teach scientist), on the spectrum of storytelling, we do stand together. And I might just get a student who wants to do their Storybook project in my class on Stonehenge, in which case I have learned some great new things to share!

January 16 email

So, we got a great email from Kerry! I hope that the content of the email is recorded SOMEWHERE at the site too (update: I did find the announcements forums when I got lost trying to find one of the assignment discussions). I actually stopped doing emails like this a long time ago so that I could use a blog instead. Why...? LINKABILITY and RE-USE. So, instead of writing emails to students each day or each week, I post the announcements in a blog, every day, and students can CHOOSE if they want to subscribe to that by email. One content tool (blog) - lots of distribution channels. :-)

So, Kerry's email covers some really important topics, and I will record some quick thoughts and notes here (because, honestly, I despair of having a discussion about stuff like this inside the Janux platform... I get the awful feeling I can post things in there and I would never even be able to find them again!).

Thoughts about the email:

I know Kerry's for-credit students are so glad about the flexibility on the assignment deadlines for the first two weeks. Online courses are so great that way!

I wonder if Kerry can LINK to items in Janux...? Because, honestly, we need links in this email. If someone has NOT read the Syllabus yet or read the Week at a Glance, they should do that now, and having a link there would really help. Is anything in Janux linkable? I have not figured that out.

I need to go do an introduction in the forum... but I find that kind of discouraging given the unwieldy way HTML editor and the way things are so hard to find again. I wish we had SUBSTANTIAL profile pages, as opposed to the very minimalist profiles available right now.

I need to leave a note to say hi to Brent, whom I do now know. Kerry, of course, I know, ha ha. He has been my digital hero since I first came here to OU in 1999 (in fact, I can still remember talking to someone on my first day on campus who interrupted me mid-sentence and said, "You have to meet Kerry Magruder!").

I am glad Kerry told us to go to the Lessons tab. I did that simply because I could not figure out the Dashboard, but now I see that was the right thing to do!

Of course, I totally love Kerry's way of explaining that the course is not a survey of content to memorize and master but instead adventures to have together with others as we explore together. That is soooooo much easier to do online than in a traditional classroom! And just from the reading I did in the books the other night, I have hundreds of questions (literally: hundreds!) that I want to explore.

So.... KUDOS TO KERRY on this email! I have participated in several MOOCs and never received anything even close to this as a communication from the instructor.  I still feel trepidation about the software, but I am excited to see what I will get to learn tonight!

Week 1: Starting Assumptions

For my Starting Assumptions, I would like to write about the woodcut, because Kerry has made such good use of that over the years. I love the large version of it that I bookmarked last fall when Kerry shared it as his blog - here is the big image; more about that in Kerry's blog post:

The details are just beautiful, and I will confess that my favorite details are the faces of the sun and of the moon in the "familiar" world: the sun is gazing upon the world which is full of greenery, water, homes where we live, while the moon is resting peacefully, slumbering just as we do in the night... all very unlike the strange and alien world which the person in red has glimpsed by going outside the bubble. There is a yellow and orange orb that might be the sun, but it has no face, and there is a blue orb that might be the moon, but again it has no face; there is no man in the moon in that view of the heavens.

The reason I am excited to take this course is that I spend my time in a world of stories and imagination, mythology and folklore, where the sun really can be a character in a story (like in this beautiful Cherokee legend about the origin of strawberries, which my own students are reading this week), and my own knowledge of science is not great. Well, linguistics - I know a fair amount of linguistic science. But ask me to tell you the evidence for the earth moving around the sun? Honestly, I could not tell you.

So, it's not like I see a face in the sun, and I know the sun is not a sentient being in the world. But... even though I "know" that, I could easily make up a story about a sentient sun (in fact, there's a great Doctor Who episode on that theme), while learning about the mathematics and the science of astronomy will be a challenge for me in this class. I really like the challenge of learning something about the science in a context that I find so congenial: the context of stories, just as Kerry has emphasized in the opening videos. So, I look forward to more to come and am very glad to be getting started.

Day 3: Starting Assumptions, Week 1

Okay, I am less frazzled this evening (first day of school is always so crazy!), and it looks like Janux is less frazzled, too - I was able to log on with no problem this time.

I will confess that I do not understand the Dashboard - there is obviously some weird stuff going on that is buggy as you can see in this screenshot, and I don't understand the order of things here at all; the starting assumptions discussion is here on the top, very prominent, but the video does not match (it's an orientation video I think); then Topic 2 is above Topic 1, and the assignment I need to do - starting assumptions - is kind of  in the middle of everything. So, I would expect the Dashboard to be the place to tell me what I need to do now... but it's not. I will try Lessons instead!

Okay, Lessons is organized in a way I understand. There is the Orientation on top - but that's a video I've already seen (it was released a while ago - I actually saw it on the OU website homepage when it was featured there), and I do know about academic integrity already (we're in trouble if I don't, ha ha). So, given my limited time, I'm going to plunge into Starting Assumptions which I think has a video for me to watch... let me click and see!

YES. Excellent... I see the video. But, not excellent, it looks like I cannot share this video, and I cannot use it with my video viewing tool of choice, VideoNot.es. ARGH! The way I like to watch educational videos is with the amazing VideoNot.es so that I can take notes that are keyed to the timestamp of the video. No such luck. Open videos benefit everybody... as do transcripts. Especially in the absence of a note-taking took like VideoNot.es, a transcript would really help for note-taking too. Coursera has transcripts (plain text) for videos... I sure would like to see that here too, but I did not see a transcript for this video.

But the video was a pleasure to listen to (Kerry is fabulous, as always), and here are my thoughts, which I will also go post in Janux:

~ ~ ~

(Since this software troubleshooting stuff is so distracting, I've moved the actual assignment to a new post - Week 1 Starting Assumptions - and created a Label to keep the assignments separate: Assignments.)

~ ~ ~

I'm going to go post this now and I look forward to commenting on some other people's post. I actually cannot find the "assignments" area with the "Declaration" ... but that helps me decide what I had already decided more or less, which was not to do any of the quizzes or grades or anything like that. I'm here for the pleasure of the learning; that is plenty for me. :-)

Update:

I was going to post my starting assumptions, but here is what happened:

That is in Safari. Let me go try in Chrome. ...

Update. Okay, I was able to post the reply in Chrome, but I the replies are all screwy somehow. I click reply, and there's no window. One time I did get it to bring up a window, so I typed a reply, but I cannot see if it went through. So, I went back to Safari; still getting the error message there, so I am going to try Firefox. That's the last browser I've got, so if that does not work I will call it a night. The interface is pretty terrible for discussion... I thought Coursera was terrible, but at least it was pretty simple. This is just hard to use, and for no good reason that I can figure out. I wish everything would just stay still! I think the reply window is there but it keeps scrolling out of view before I can type anything.

Update. Okay, I managed to leave my second comment in Firefox, which I guess was the best of the three, but the whole experience was maddening. There's some weird kind of delay as I type, and the space is really off-putting to browse around in. I'm used to all kinds of online environments, and I'm online all day interacting with people... but this space is really not working for me. If I were not committed to the course, I would give it up. I'd very much like to interact with the people and get to know them, but I'm not confident that this is going to happen, not with an interface that is so off-putting. Normally I would be browsing around in there, reading more, leaving lots of comments for different people - but I left two comments for people who had no comments at all on their posts (I hope everybody gets at least one comment), and that's it.

Maybe I'll try on my iPad or Chromebook later to see if it is more congenial on something other than a Mac...

Update. On the iPad I cannot get it to load at all; I just get the little green man doing his dance as it says "Loading..." - but it never finishes loading. That's Safari on the iPad.  Let me try Chromebook as one last attempt to find the hardware that will really work here...

Update. Chromebook: It also will not load on the Chromebook. I don't get the little green man; I just get "Waiting for janux.ou.edu" in the status bar. Waiting. Wating. Waiting. So maybe they are still having load problems and that is also why I was getting such a bad lag and terrible responsiveness when I actually was able to get to the discussion.

I will hope for better tomorrow... but if I were a casual visitor here, not committed to the course, I would not be coming back. Too many other places online to see, too much other stuff to do without all this frustration.