Lesson One - February 8 - February 14

The participation in the lesson was more than I could have ever imagined.  I was honestly surprised that I had such a great feedback from the students.  From reading the first chapter and other readings in the class, I knew that its important to have the learners engaged through discussion.  One of the main learning methods in an online classroom is from the feedback a learner gets from other students.  The first chapter definied the instructors role as a facilitator of the learning process.  My goal was to make students think about what they were learning and at the same time learn what other students got out of the material as well.  As I teacher, I learned something about myself as a facilitator of discussion.  As the week started, I saw myself responding to every post -- almost taking on the role of the student.  However, as I backed away from the discussion I continued to see new ideas everyday.  As a teacher, we want control of the learning enviroment, and sometimes we find ourselves limiting the students because of this.  In my classroom, its hard to give my students an open ended discussion question and see them struggle through the answers when we have plenty of material we can be reviewing.  However, I've begun to learn that part of students accepting responsibility of their own learning is to trust their fellow classmates for help and further understanding.