Structuring a lecture
Friday I am supposed to give a lecture on Internet history. It's not really my strongest field, but I have absorbed a bit more than most of my colleagues, and I really should know this stuff, so OK. I have spent the day gathering links, and reading the very short article on the reading list for these students. The article, by Gunnar Liestøl, a professor at the University of Oslo, is called "Fra Memex til World Wide Web" (From memex to www), and starts out as a fair (although short) list of important people and important events. Of course, it neglects Ada Lovelace, but we're used to that, right?

The fun part is that I now have all of the lecture structured in my head and on my note-blog, and I am looking forwards to filling in with facts offline, on paper. The blog I keep for offering the students easy access to the links I use for the lectures isn't just a way to park links, but a way to structure my own preparations. And it works, just as this blog has worked as a way to help me structure my thoughts through a much longer and more painful research phase.