Diary of a Blended Teacher, Vol. 1

1. I know so little about computers that I completely forget my BASIC programming class in twelfth grade--and also dropped typing because it was lowering my GPA. Now I type about 120 WPM and use the internet all the time because: it doesn't require any knowledge of computers to use them for teaching.
2. January, 1987: Eric Schaeffer, an instructor at UC Davis who supervised we grad student teachers, asks, "Would you try teaching a Poetry Writing class in a computer classroom connected to the internet?" "Sure," I said, even though I didn't own a computer. It worked. I learned to make jokes when the computers crashed or were slow.
3. 1994-1996: I rent a Mac Classic for $25 a quarter to write my dissertation. It didn't have spell check installed. Don't read my dissertation for the spelling, per se. (I ended up teaching the following classes in computer classrooms: Advanced Business Writing, Advanced Scientific Writing, Advanced Writing, Intro to Composition about Literature, Poetry Writing)
4. 1999: I interview for my job at Dominican and they ask if I would consider leading composition ("Sure.") and teach on-line. I have no knowledge of HTML. "Okay, I'll try," I say.
5. I try. I teach using some jimmied free-ware I find online, and eventually, Blackboard.com's free version. Then, the purchased version when Dominican signs on.
6. Online, composition classes sometimes fly, sometimes fail. Everything then was based on luck: who you could get to teach, what they knew, how the students felt that semester. It went into hiatus a while because there was no training for faculty and no PT people had internet/computers on campus. No resources or support = no one was able to play for a while.
7. Dateline SP 05: Terry Ratcliffe, formerly of Univ. Phoenix, now directing extended/distance ed and Pathways at DUC, offers training in Blended Learning. A live+online course on teaching live + online courses. I take it. I like it. Great trainers. Interesting concept.
8. An Aside [Sometime during this story I got married and adopted a cherub. Priorities changed; scheduling changed; our child thinks all computers have her picture on them, because she is my screen saver, and I show her that when she's impatient that I'm online.]
9. Dateline Fa 2005: Unbeknownst to them, my incoming students in US Lit & a grad class in Personal Writing become much-tended pioneers in Blended Learning: they have classes live+online for the semester. An Aside: In the future, such things will be 'beknownst" to the students in advance.
10. I set up web sites on Blackboard for those classes. My husband calls the US Lit web site "the other man," because I spend so much time working on it. Classes begin, students discover they are pioneers, and the drama takes on new life in:
11. The present, when I teach in person frequently and read students' posts and homework online also.

The surprise:
I really like it, and think they are learning a lot. I am too.

Appendix: Most of them are getting a lot out of it. Some know it's hard, some feel the struggle to learn a new way of learning, some are great advocates of this way of learning, some are skeptical, neutral. By the second week of class, I know the writing/thinking style, interests, and work habits of 80% of my students--a first in fifteen years of teaching. . .

to be continued