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.