Please reflect back over the workshop and post any overarching thoughts or recommendations to this thread. We will sythesize the postings at 2:00 on Friday.

Not to sound cliche, but I really enjoyed this workshop. It was hard work, but completely reenergized me and my passion for teaching at a point in the semester where the intense workload of juggling four new class preps was starting to get me down.

Not only did I come away with a new class activity of my own, but a few others that I hope to adapt to my classes.

To me, an overarching theme was trying to engage students into scientific thinking without intimidating them. So many of us teach non-majors, and it's great to be talking with you about how to get them comfortable with the scientific method without browbeating them. Climate change is a hugely teachable topic, everyone gets interested quickly, and using that to get them involved in doing science is key.

I agree with Todd. I think another theme was to empower knowledge through more hands-on activities (whether physical activities or web content/data). There are so many good ideas and directions that have come from the activities. We all took a little different road to get there, but the basic idea is the same (analyzing data, synthesizing data, critical thinking and summarization). It's encouraging to see all of the different options that people came up with. I too love these workshops (this one came a very busy time, but I've gained a lot out of it)! Thanks for overseeing it Cathy and Karin (and anyone else I'm missing) as well as all of the presenters!

So I'm on the synthesis phone call until 3:30. While I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to work on my activity, I feel that the talks and discussions were very valuable. I will use many of the visualizations and techniques discussed as time permits.

The synchronous sessions were tough to fit in, but I really enjoyed looking through folks' teaching ideas and "discussing" on the website! Todd, hang in there, my first year was very tough too (I hadn't done much curriculum development of my own as a grad student, although I had the privilege of helping teach a wonderful recently re-vamped climate system curriculum!) and it's amazing, some things you spend tons of time setting up don't work very well, and sometimes the last-minute "what am I going to do in class today!?" panic leads to great education!
Keep in touch, everyone--

I can only echo much of the great wisdom shared so far in these comments. I really appreciate getting to know some of you a bit more intimately via the activity group interaction. Not quite like attending a 'face-to-face' conference where you can chat during poster sessions or out over coffee between talks, but it was pretty good given the limitations of our respective availabilities due to having to maintain our 'real lives' while attending this workshop.

...and speaking of the 'real lives' piece, I'm wondering if maybe it'd be possible to spread this week-long online workshop over two weeks. I know it'd be a bear for Karin and Cathy and Sean to have to attend to our needs for an additional week, but it was something of a grind to get my workshop work accomplished in the midst of my ongoing teaching and committee responsibilities. One thing about attending a 'face-to-face' conference is that you can put these other responsibilities aside and be immersed; with us, the other stuff didn't go away. I still haven't had a chance to see all the presentations, so I hope they stay posted for another week so I can catch up.

Finally -- I feel privileged as a science instructor to be participating in the transition from an era of acute specialization and consequent isolation to an era of multi-discipline integration and utilization. As a 'hard rock' geologist, I've been enriched by the contributions of all you meteorologists, paleoclimatologists, oceanographers, fluid dynamicists -- thanks to you all! Ultimately all of our students stand to gain from our collective efforts toward the integration of our disciplines.

Rob