Class last night was fun. My student completed and presented their 
measurement projects. They were great! Doing a project right up front gives the students an opportunity to document where they are, now, at the beginning of the course. It also gives them a microcosm of the whole course to reflect on: What is it to be a student? What are my goals and motivations in doing a project? What is the project asking for? How will it be evaluated? It also lets students see and hear one another and begin valuing each other's skills and perspectives: Who might I want to to work with? Who might be able to help me with this, that, or the other? It also greases the skids for all of the technology use: How do we move files around? What do I need to do to develop a workflow? And, by having it happen in the first week, it doesn't conflict with other courses much.
The whole class discussion was challenging. Most undergraduates are nervous about speaking up in class, at least at the beginning. When we got to Flatland, though, it became clear that a lot of people just hadn't read it. I exhorted that they make sure they've completed the reading by next week, so that we can talk about it. I'm glad Buzz turned me on to Flatland two years ago, when we first taught the course together -- if you can get students to read it, it works very well at shaking them loose from their usual patterns of thinking -- inducing a sense of disequilibrium. After reading it, we resume a more normal trajectory in our readings and activities, but students are more likely to be reflective thoughtful about their academic routine and their reflexive behaviors in approaching the course.
I'm approaching digital video differently this semester. In the past, we've done digital video as just a one-evening mini-project. This semester, I took half-an-hour and demo-ed the use of our digital video cameras and iMovie. My goal was to simply give the students enough confidence that they could get the camera and start playing with it. Instead of doing it class, though, the students will do a persuasion project outside of class, to be presented to the class sometime before Thanksgiving. It's a low stakes project, but I think it will be fun and this will give students the opportunity to make something with higher production values. Even the best of the projects from the past years (Dye Now and Levis Genes have fairly low production values.
At 8:30, Randy stopped by after conducting a review session for biol100. The students were working in small groups brainstorming ideas for their video projects. He observed to me that it seemed like a noisy, happy, active classroom, which he thought was impressive at 8:30 at night, two and a half hours into class. I remembered the similar experience last year around this time. The semester is off to a great start -- I think this is going to be an awesome year.
After class, I went to close the window and discovered that some European paper wasps (Polistes dominulus) were auditing the course. I've opened and closed that window a half dozen times in the past week without noticing them. Today I went down with R and took some pictures of them. R and I agreed that we wouldn't disturb the wasp nest, but to put a sign on the window to warn people about the potential danger.
I shot some video too, but they wouldn't move without us making threatening moves, and I wasn't willing to be close enough to film them while they were being threatened, so you have to content yourself with stills. I did post a version in the Gallery of Biological Imagery though. I learned some interesting stuff about paper wasps while writing the blurb. It was surprising to me how little concern there is, seemingly, about the loss of the native paper wasp. Some people complain about the paper wasps competing for nesting cavities or about the wasps being more aggressive than the native ones (although people seem divided about that), but I don't see anyone complaining about the native species being displaced for a priori reasons.