Reflection - eLearning for Educators

Caring for people’s feelings when chatting online (participating in online forums, etc.) produces an inviting tone and helps make safe space online. This is one thing I want my students to learn.

SOS – Safe Online Space!

Wednesday, January 21 was my Waterloo Day. I completely hit bottom with online learning – on two levels. First of all, I was frustrated with the learning process. Second, my daughter’s been sick for four months. Third, learning the material and the new technology and posting on time has been problematic and I was feeling overwhelmed. Plus, I was feeling alone out here and facing my vulnerabilities and insecurities and frustration with this ability I have to find any loopholes within a system. I wrote in for help and brought my daughter to school. While there, I had an epiphany: I’m going to value and see as a gift this ability to find loopholes by coming up against them. It will be great for user interface, creating online with grace and ease! And then I made a major life decision: to value my vulnerability. After all, that’s what makes me compassionate (most of the time) and is the basis for love. I’m done with putting myself down for being a sensitive individual. I am now valuing major parts of myself for the first time. Yay, Me!

This revelation was so worth the overwhelm and the intensity of work for this week. I transformed my life and in the process learned exactly how it feels to be on the other end of the computer as a student in need of acknowledgement. Those were valuable things to learn as an online instructor!

Other than that, I just worked really, really, really, really hard.