More details on posting and leading discussions

Greetings everyone. I received a few questions asking details on the weblog posting and the leading of discussions, so I wanted to post my response here, so everyone could read it:

OK, as far as the posts go, you want to note three points that you thought were significant, and that no one else has yet listed. My goal is that by the time everyone has posted 3 things that are important, most of the highlights will be there, listed on the weblog, for your consideration (and later review.)

As for the class discussions, it actually depends on the reading. For some of them, going over the major points and explaining things that your classmates were confused about will be fine. For others, particularly the more practically (as opposed to theoretically) based readings, you might want to have more of a workshop (where you have some activities that illustrate the points) or even a demo. Some of my very favorite class discussions have been where there is a mixture of practical and theoretical and the discussion leaders **used** the practical stuff to make the handouts about the theoretical stuff. When they did that, they could show how it worked even while they were concentrating on other content. That was an excellent use of the time.