Inner Dialogue

It's always sort of different starting an online class. In a f2f class, the students all walk in the door at the scheduled time and sit in rows, looking to the front of the room in anticipation of what is up ahead. In an online class, they sort of trickle in, one at a time, or several at once, and you are never quite sure what they will look at. Today my summer 101 class opened up at 11am and within minutes, a few of the early birds started flocking to the site. I knew they were there because I was there too and could see their names on the Online Users list. I checked out their profiles, but most of them have yet to fill in details. At the moment, most of them are names without a face, without a personality, alone there in cyberspace somewhere. My task is to take this random group of strangers, most of whom have never met in real life, and create a social learning experience that will help them understand and appreciate the realm of computer technology. The dynamics are much different from that in my f2f classes... but the goal, and hopefully the end results, are the same.