Rose Farm, Bolton

Rose Farm, Bolton, CT

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are fantastic opportunities to take college courses at no cost.  It's wonderful that complex subjects such as climate change are available to all.  Although scientists concur, the general public still considers climate change to be a controversial issue.

I help out as one of the many teacher's assistants in a Climate Literacy class at the University of British Columbia.  The voluntary job entails monitoring the discussion board, answering student questions, providing links for further reading and reporting problems that need the instructor's attention.

Walt and Lola

Alternate viewpoints and healthy debate are encouraged on the discussion forum.  Disrupting the forum, derailing discussion, demeaning other students and discrediting teacher's assistants are not tolerated and are dealt with on a case by case basis.  In only two runs of this class, all of these problems have occurred.  This has brought about a flurry of discussion and suggestions on how to prevent future problems.  It has been an eye-opening experience realizing the lengths that some people will go to to disrupt a learning environment.  Unreal.

At this point, I've had enough of picture time

I am really looking forward to the American Association of School Libraries Conference in mid-November in Hartford.   

These photos were taken at Rose Farm in Bolton, at the height of fall foliage.  I'm really not big on appearing in my own blog/website, but the leaves were spectacular that day, so I thought I'd share.