Taking your hands off the wheel

Your conversation has inspired me to reflect ... and feel that I'd like to repeat those reflections here at a higher level so that as the years go by I can keep them in front of me... (I've just read through some of my old postings... gosh I was naive... but it's a good record too of where I've come from).

Online facilitation (to an extent) requires us to let go, to give more autonomy to our learners, even to be prepared to negotiate the curriculum with them. However! we are (still) trained as teachers to be in control, for our learners to be on task, key performance indicators, expected outcomes, proficiency, assessment, yadda yadda... yet then in an online environment our role is to stand back and let our learners do the learning. I wonder if... (and forgive me if I come across as cynical) this letting go of control is difficult for many teachers. ... Add this to (as Kim Mc observed), that the need to be technologically prepared is (paradoxically) so significant that it's simply too big and we aren't paid enough.

Commitment

The volume of text input, the different places to go to find information about what to do, signing in here or setting up an account there, elluminate classroom sessions - everything we need is there and it's good, really. But the commitment on the behalf of the student to get organised, to persist, to find the answers... I do think it's worth it and I'm not complaining; it has just that it has made me think about what it must be like for my learners... daunting and intimidating perhaps, and lonely.

I ask myself how much of an assumption on the digital literacy of our students is it reasonable to make?

Facilitating online course

Having experimented with elearning in my classroom for a few years now, with mixed success, am keen to extend my horizons. (From a professional developer's point of view as well I'm interested in what it is about elearning that prevents so many of my colleagues from considering it as part of their practice... although not sure if this very environment would tell me that; also, how learners experience [my] digital faciliation - and such a course as this is ideal ... will be blogging.)

Looking forward to the insights of the faciliators and other participants on digital faciliation. In this newly revived blog I'll be reflecting on my ideas and progress (or lack thereof) as the course progresses.

(Heads up: I have a tendancy to be blunt in a blog or forum environment. Please don't be bothered by that. )