In 1999, I signed up for a course at a major R1 university in Florida, and when we arrived at the lecture hall, we were told that 2/3 of the students would migrate to Distance Learning using Blackboard. We were shocked. The online version of our module was available during registration, but few of us were inclined to sign up for online classes — it was strange, new and unknown.
Now we had no choice — we were going to be online, as if we’d lost some big varsity lottery. It felt like the university had tricked us into signing up for the course. As it turned out, I loved not commuting two hours in South Florida traffic, and instead logging onto the class for lectures, whilst sitting around my condo in my boxer shorts and T-shirt.
I also liked lots of little things, for example, the ability to copy-and-paste responses during online asynchronous group discussions, etc. Fellow college students across the USA told me similar stories back then, and as such, Distance Learning, although it was sort of forced upon us, became normalized 20+ years ago.
Fast forward to 2015, when I took a job teaching inner city junior high school Language Arts, grade 7-9. The classroom had a Smartboard and computer, but there were no work stations for students in my classroom. It felt as if I had gone back in time. Most students had cellphone, and we struggled to get them to stop texting during class — until we finally decided to collect them before class.
That’s when it occured to me that some Distance Learning modalities could be introduced, even in my prehistoric middle school classroom, by letting students do what they loved — so I gave them back their cellphones and we downloaded the WordPress app, and then I taught 24 transifxed and attentive 7th graders how to build a website and blog.
A couple years later, I visited the school, and my old classroom still didn’t have individual computer work stations for the student to use. Promised ipads for each student had never materialized. But to my pleasure and satisfactions, 7th graders who were then 9th graders rushed down the hall to hug me and they were yelling, Dr. Mark, have you seen my blog?
It was amazing — they sat and showed me one-at-a-time their blogs, which they had learned to customize and promote via social media, etc., and which they had been using to showcase their accomplishments, hobbies, hopes and middle school dreams for the last 3 years. Beyond many other frustrated moments as teacher, in that moment I felt I had given them something that would outlive me: a fearless and gleeful adeptness online, where they could be themselves and where they could be part of digital society that was leaving so many of their subeconomic and underprivileged families behind.
This led me to reflect to today as to how perhaps the horse have left the barn and how the ’emergency’ imposition of online learning might have some widespread positive effects of teachers, students and parents. And I can dream, can’t I?
Dottore Mark 