I’m finding it harder than I thought to convert activities I’ve done many times in face to face classes to individual study materials!  Even where I had a really clear task specification, if it is read by someone alone out there it is completely missing any context.

So, Ive been busy writing introductions to each activity,  a sort of preamble of all the things I might say when I ask people to do the task in a face to face class. It is very different to have these written down as I make  spontaneous remarks, putting my pre-written task in the context of that particular class, and the history of discussions we’ve had in it. I guess when I introduce a task in class I’m selling it to that very particular audience, and so I might do it in different ways with different groups. When I speak I’m locating the activity in the ongoing history of our relationship, and trying to link back to what was said or done earlier and forward to what we’ll be doing later in the course. By writing down these spontaneous remarks as introductions I’m addressing an imagined reader with whom I have no history and will have no interaction. I wonder what they will make of them…