It has been a crazy week....

Whew... what a busy week it has been.   Lots of stuff to do for class.  And, much like a "real" student... it is getting down to the wire for my posts.

As I've mentioned before I am an online "teacher".   I put quotes around it because about 90% of the time I am an online "grader".  The company I teach with has a self-contained course where the students do all sorts of activities that include reading, writing, listening and "speaking" which is really just recording themselves reading their written work in some cases.    
I bring this up because I really like how this textbook is laid out.  It gives REAL classroom examples for a truly facilitated experience which I feel I am lacking, especially since I am teaching a foreign language. Well, any course, really.

I understand that there are different learning styles that we all have、but I feel the work-at-your-pace with minimal feedback, other than a note or an email isn't the best way to teach.  This could be partly because I am only a part-time instructor and don't have office hours.    I'm not sure, I don't know what the solution is.   This comes to mind because the textbook gives many practical examples on integrating technology into an existing classroom.

Although I think learning styles all need to be accounted for and some students are more than capable of working on things on their own and doing well, I do feel that having actual interaction with a teacher is extremely important.   Things like the alligator in the sewer project in chapter 4 won't happend in a setting like what I teach in because there isn't a "class" per se.   I think that is were some students miss out.   I also think it will be all of the students who are not already highly motivated.

Let's be honest here, motivated students will do well in pretty much any setting.  It's the other students who might need a little motivation that I feel will miss out. They are the ones I feel need that flexibility and the power of the "teachable moment".  

 Humans are social creatures by and large and need to be in social environments.  Even though we have "social" media, a status update is not the same with direct communication with another person.