Introductions

[Cathy Swift]

Hi, Everyone:

 

We do have some new members this year, so it will be good to get to know each other better.  Please respond to this discussion post and introduce yourself and tell us a little about YOU, i.e. what you teach, etc.  That way, by the time we have our call in October, we will know each other a little better.

[Lois Easterday]

Hi Everyone. I am a Professor of Sociology at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York. I have been at the college for 34 years and have been teaching sociology for about 36 years. I am currently teaching Introductory Sociology, Social Problems, and Popular Culture, all on line. I have been teaching on line for about 8 years, but have not been entirely on line until recently. I also teach Death and Dying once in a while, and have taught Gender Roles. I am originally from Montana, but have lived in the Midwest and East for a long time. I enjoyed our conversations in MERLOT last year and look forward to "new adventures" this year.
Lois Easterday

[Cathy Swift]

Lois, one of our Editors, Jane Moore (Teacher Ed) also teaches Death and Dying. I'd never heard of that course before. What a coincidence!

We're happy to have you back this year.

[Margaret Choka]

I am a professor of sociology at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tennessee. I teach full-time online and also train online instructors. I have been teaching at the college for 23 years. I teach social problems and introduction to sociology.

[Cathy Swift]

And I had the pleasure of meeting with Margaret face to face at our conference in San Jose in July. It was good to talk to you, Margaret, as I'd already "met you" with the Sociology Taskforce. Glad to have you on board.

[Margaret Choka]

I am glad and honored to be back. We have a great team.

[michael miller]

Here are some really valuable online video websites. The first, Mindgate Media, links to video across the entire curriculum whereas the second, The Sociological Cinema, is focused on sociology.

http://mindgatemedia.com/ondemand/

http://www.thesociologicalcinema.com/

[Cathy Swift]

We all looked at these on the call today. They are really incredible. Mike, I forgot to ask if you are going to add these to MERLOT (the home page). If not, I can do it.

[michael miller]

Cathy, please do add them to the MERLOT homepage. Thanks, Mike

[John (Jay) Stewart]

Hello,
I go by Jay (not John). (That TV guy on the Daily Show spells his name "Jon". ) I teach sociology at the University of Hartford and have been here since 1984. I was at Washington State University three years before that, but my wife could not find an academic job there, so she picked the next place. She's at UCONN-Storrs and we feel so lucky to have two academic, tenured jobs close to each other.

I generally teach the much hated courses on methodology and statistics, as well as social change and social inequality.

I have not done any on-line teaching, but have dabbled a bit in multimedia techniques. Initially I was trained on SuperCard, which was similar to the old Mac Hypercard. Supercard went out of business, so I taught myself a little DIRECTOR and my "Levels of Measurement" tutorial is one example, which is located here:
http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/JSTEWART/DIRECTOR.htm
and listed in Merlot. It should probably be listed in the sociology--methodology section of Merlot. I decided that DIRECTOR was not the best programming tool for what I needed and have been learning another Hypercard based program: Revolution, which has just changed its name to LiveCode. I am using it to program a game that I hope to use in my social inequality class.

I do very simple web pages for various groups, such as the University's Outing Club, which I am trying to start, and a conference on Women and Peace.

I hope to participate more in this group and accomplish my tasks better after a conference this Saturday 10/16. I got talked into presenting on a topic (history of energy and oil) that I know very little about, so it has eaten up most of my spare time.

Jay

[Cathy Swift]

Hi, Jay. Welcome to the Editorial Board. I'm glad to see your material is cataloged in MERLOT. Good luck with the conference on the 16th!

[Aaron Flint]

Hi everyone. Sorry for my late entry to the introductions.

I have been at Southern New Hampshire University as an adjunct professor for 11 years and have been working as Manager of Instructional Support here for 10. In my teaching role I teach Sociology courses (intro, social problems, sociology of aging, minority relations, sociology of families, research methods) to in traditional, hybrid, and online formats. In my Instructional Support role I work with faculty to integrate technology into their teaching. I manage and teach a variety of academic technologies including Blackboard, Qualtrics, Turnitin, RefWorks, Chalk & Wire ePortfolios, and CoursEval to name a few.

I enjoyed our work last year and am looking forward to this years progress.

~ Aaron

[Cathy Swift]

Thanks, Aaron. I look forward to working with you.