Blackboard

Okay, so I wasn’t aware that we were supposed to actually sign up for some of the online courses on the Blackboard website until a couple of days ago. Haha. Which explains why I am just posting it now. I had to sign up and wait for the courses to be approved.

So I checked out ELA 10F, ELA 30S Literary Focus, and World Issues 40S. It’s actually very organized and I love it. These modules are very similar to the modules that we used in high school back at my school. I remember breezing through the ELA modules, and kind of stalling on the math modules. I loved being able to go at my own pace. However, I don’t really agree with the fact that doing online courses ONLY is the best way to go. It’s kind of like Sandra Bullock’s sad lonely character in “The Net”. She thought that she was content and had everything, but it was so easy for her to lose her identity because she interacted with people only ever on the internet, and through phone calls.

However, I could see how this would be beneficial to students who can’t regularly come to school. I had some students in my last-placement switch over to the CCPE, which stands for Crocus Continuing Education Program because they had jobs or babies to tend to. I can see how these online courses would be beneficial to students who are in schools or communities that have no Adult Education or Continuing Education programming.

Pros and Cons?

Indeed. But I still believe that a mixture of both online and face-to-face interaction would be most beneficial.