I enjoyed reading this chapter on sensory integration, although I was already familiar with most of the information provided. The experience (I'm reluctant to call it a disorder; perhaps reorder) of synesthesia--where the senses get mixed up, where people see smells and can taste letters--give us a great idea of the sort of collaborative work that the senses do in order to produce meaningful experiences. Experience is always a coenaesthesis of lots of sensory data, and the basic idea of this article is that in the ideal learning environment, we would combine senses (especially smell) in order to create more memorable experiences. Medina mentions how Proust wrote about this long ago, how smells and memories are linked (long before science caught up, I might add) on page 173. Others too, like Joyce, Kafka, Beckett, and others wrote about synesthesia in various ways. How crazy would it be to integrate all the senses into our teaching to produce more effective learning; if this science is solid (and I think it is), perhaps this is the next step in integrating the paradigm shift that Tagg and Barr called for in the mid-90s. 

I recently converted my ENG 1020 College Composition II course (both f2f and web-based) to make use of Open Educational Resources, dispensing with the traditional textbook altogether, to the joy of my students and the fury of a select few administrators (although some administrators 'get it'). Although I don't use a textbook much in these classes, I do have them read a few pages out of an open source, ebook comp/rhet reader: Rhetoric and Composition, which can be downloaded as a PDF as well. 

I wasn't familiar with the phrase Reusable Learning Resources (RLOs), and I didn't really look into those too much, which probably could have saved me a lot of time. I developed almost everything from scratch. We use Blackboard at Tri-C, although I'm currently on a task force that is evaluating that LMS versus many of the ones listed on the "OER Friendly Learning Environments" quest. I've been meaning to use VoiceThreads, as I've heard great things about it, but I just haven't had the time to mess around with it yet. 

The list of image repositories was really helpful. I copied those links into a Word document, as I'm always looking for legal images. I've recently reverted to using my own photography when possible. I have my own critical views on intellectual property 'rights,' but the College takes such things very seriously (and I suppose I get paid to take them seriously as well), so these resources really help. I've removed a lot of images from courses a number of years ago that were not in compliance, so I hope these links will help me find better, open images to replace these. 

I looked through some of the links on the morality/legality quest, and it was funny to see how people have classified behavior and language into ages, year by year. There's a certain absurdity to this whole matter. This fits into the whole anti-harrassment agenda (which is political to the core), which while important can be taken too far. Lots to be said here, but I'll keep it to myself. I certainly violate some of the age 15-17 prescriptions on Common Sense Media in my classes that have high schoolers (PSEOP students) in them. Never a problem. These sorts of prescriptions attempt to take the life out of living and the humanity out of teaching. 

Kevin's Storify was cool to see. I like how he integrated so much video with big headlines to describe what those sections would be about. This reminded me a little of Scoop.it but in a more blog-like, organized fashion. Storify made it really easy to share someone else's work, too. 

Amy's Padlet was really well done, and I'm glad I opened it up, because it was so much bigger and easier to navigate in a full browser version versus being embedded within Scalar. I love how interactive it is (even more so than Prezi), and how you can click on text and it comes up bigger in another bar. I will totally use this program to make some notes and presentations for class.