Final Reflection

 Last year, my first hour American Authors class had 40 students in the class.  Sometimes at the end of the week I would look at the kids filing out the door at the end of the hour and think about who I hadn't talked to at all over the course of the week because there were literally too many people in the class to be able to interact with everybody.

Looking back at Christ Church College from the Meadow

 Then this summer I took a class at Oxford University in England and learned more about their tutorial system.  At Oxford each student is assigned a tutor and students never sit in a classroom (lectures are recommended, but not required).  The most number of students who ever meet with a tutor (an Oxford professor, AKA a genius) at a time to discuss a topic is three.  Each week, the tutor and student meet.  The tutor assigns the student with books to read and a paper to write and the next week the student comes back needing to interpret what they've read, present their papers to their tutor, and respond to the tutor's questions.  It's kind of like giving a dissertation every week.  I was fascinated by this kind of one-on-one education where many of the world's smartest people study.  A class size of 40 students together for the purpose of studying literature and writing would never be considered.

What struck me the most while taking this class was when Kris said that online learning is like having "a class of thirty, but instead thirty classes of one."  The opportunities that we can potentially present to students through online learning seem to me more in line with the Oxford model of education.  Also, the idea of really being able to understand and push the students in the middle is very motivating to me.  I certainly spend more time giving my attention to the students who are very high and very low-skilled, and the ability to provide more individualized attention for the students in the middle is something that appeals to me as a teacher.

I'm not sure when or if I'll have the opportunity to teach online, but I have certainly learned more about technology that can support me as a teacher and that I can include in my current brick-and-mortar classroom.

Synchronous and Asynchonous Tools

The online synchronous tools that I have experience with are Audio Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Video Conferencing, Chat, Instant Messaging, and Application Sharing, and most of my experience comes from this class!  It has been very useful for me to be exposed to these new tools to get an idea of the types of things that will be available to me as an online teacher.  The experience that I found particularly useful was when our group of four was having a video conference in a Google Chatroom where we met together to have a discussion first and then we kept our video and audio communication links open while we worked together writing an essay in a Google Drive document.  In terms of the question "which synchronous tools are least effective" I would say that I don't consider any of the tools ineffective if they are used for their intended purposes.  For example, if you tried to have an entire group discussion on a complex topic (example: the significance of the ending of a novel) over instant messaging, you would not be using the best tool available to you.  It is then up to the instructor to include something like a required Skype chat in the assignment guidelines because the students will be able to make much better connections through a video conference where they can see each other, read body language, and hear tone, rather than typing out responses in an instant messaging format.

The Loosens at Denali

The benefits of asynchronous tools come mainly from students and teachers not needing to all be online at the same time to engage in learning.  What I most like about asynchonous tools is the time available to digest and reflect before responding to a question or new idea.  Discussion boards are great places where people all over the world can come together to collaborate and post ideas.  It was neat to see that people from countries all over the world were also reading what I wrote.  I took an online Art History course this summer, and it was completely asynchronous.  We had deadlines for discussion posts, essays, and exams, but we decided how we divided up the work in order to get the tasks done on time.  There was never a time when we all were required to be online at once. For a subject like Art History where our primary source was our textbook, the format worked perfectly.  Several weeks into the course, I left to spend two weeks in Alaska and it was fantastic to have been able to do most of the reading and essays before I left for my vacation.  I love the flexibility of asynchronous tools.

Is Online Teaching for Me?

I think my strengths that will be a benefit to me as an online teacher are that I am very detail-oriented and organized, and I enjoy the planning process.  I think something that will be hard for me are all the technical problems that are completely outside of my control and my students' control.  Thinking more about teaching online actually has made me appreciate more the experiences that I have with my students in person.  Humor is an important part of my classroom, and I think it's easier to have a quick back-and-forth exchange with students when they are literally sitting in front of you.  Having taken an online class on Art History this summer, as a student I really enjoyed the flexibility of being about to work when I wanted to and to move at my own pace.  I feel that overall I have many of the skills that are beneficial for online teachers to have, and I am definitely interested in this new challenge.

Reflection on Week Two

I completed the internet browser worksheet yesterday, but I didn't learn anything that made me think that I would recommend one browser over another to my students.  My school has more Macs and students generally use Safari.  The difference among browsers that seemed most relevant to me was Safari and Chrome's ability to open up Java. 

I have used Firefox for years, and I talked to my brother-in-law who works for Apple yesterday and he said that Firefox is a great browser choice for me for what I do because it's cross-platform and great for web applications and online forms. 


I just started going through the social bookmarking websites.  It was useful to read Crystal's post on her blog today because she feels that social bookmarking is a tool that she's going to be able to use with her students as they do research projects, so I'm going to keep that idea in mind as I look at some of the bookmarking tools.

What I Am Hoping To Learn in CEDO 501

I teach eleventh and twelfth grade English at Milwaukee School of Languages.  This year I am teaching two sections of AP English Literature and Composition, one section of American Authors, one elective course called "Writing Lab," and an elective course on Linguistics (if you're thinking that having four preps is absolutely ridiculous, you are right).

My Linguistics class is my "life's work."  I designed the course for my Master's thesis project, and it is the only high school level course on Linguistics taught in the United States.  Ultimately, I would like to turn Linguistics into an online course so that high school students who do not attend my school could also take Linguistics.  My school district (Milwaukee Public Schools) is starting a requirement that all students must take either an online course or service-learning course by 2014, and I think Linguistics would be a great course to go district-wide in an online format.  I am hoping that this course will give me skills that will help me to see the different ways that I can conduct my own online class some day.

In this class, I am also interested in learning more about different discussion formats that my AP English students could use to extend their conversations outside of the classroom.  I have also been thinking about having students write blogs in my Writing Lab elective.

I started my first blog this past April at http://msloosen.blogspot.com as a record of a trip I took this summer to take a class on Poetry at the University of Oxford (and then I went to the Olympics in London!) as part of a national Fund for Teachers scholarship.  I have a second blog at http://highschoollinguistics.blogspot.com where I've posted some ideas for other teachers who are interested in teaching Linguistics at their schools.