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 * REFLECTIONS ON ONLINE LEARNING AND MENTORING**

Reflecting on my experiences this quarter, I really used the tools I learned in this class for two purposes. The first was to bring the online community to a school, where I was student teaching. What I hoped to achieve with my online shared writing project, was to make up for what seemed to be lacking in the class room, and that was how the students' identity and/or point-of-view had a chance to interact with the material they were learning in the class room. Material that was vibrant and exciting, seemed to be whittled down to laborious systems in class, and the student's point-of-view or interpretation of the project was secondary to how the teacher perceived it. My idea was to use literature to draw out the students' point-of-view, and by so doing, connect their struggle for identity to a larger context, giving validity to their voice and experience.

There is an article by Michael Nakkula entitled, “Identity and Possibility” that deals with the concept of identity in adolescents. The work also focuses on the concept of "reciprocal transformation", wherein the students are not merely observers in a class, but are connected with their learning community, thereby articulating and shaping their own identity in education with the power of their voice. The online community gives students consistent exposure to articulating themselves in an academic environment. This tool impacts the students' "developmental moratorium" or their positive experiences in an academic setting.

If the students are the “life” in the class room and they are falling asleep at their desks, then education is rendered moot or only relevant to a few. The students are overwhelmingly intelligent, they have a wealth of experience that has shaped the way they see the world around them. However in many cases a students' social class, economic stability and familial circumstances make a huge impact on their “developmental moratorium”. Often their interaction with education has made them feel inadequate. They have missed large chunks of school and have problems with their writing and grammar skills. They are also missing huge chunks of academic language. The students don't necessarily have family or social support systems that encourage them in their scholastic achievements, and this effects how they see themselves in education. They often may see themselves as “stupid” or “bad” or I dare say “failing”.

Education has to be a dialogue, it has to happen out-loud, it has to include the development of the teacher/student relationship, and it has to be reciprocal and relevant to the students' point-of-view. Anything short of this model is wasting time with petty irrelevant tasks, that translate into busy work and alienate the students further from accessing the scholarship of the material; accessing the scholarship of their own contribution to the work and in short accessing education. There is a teacher who works with kids who have been kicked out of school on Mural projects. Not only are these students developing their artistic skills, they are articulating their identity to a deaf world across bridges and walls that the students recognize in their community. This gives the students recognition for their work, it gives them a chance to interact with the entire legacy of art history, and it pulls them into the scholarship of a whole new world. Online learning has the power to do as much for the non-traditional student.

In the online community students are interacting in a tangible environment that does not disappear when the class is over, but can be kept, accessed and reflected on by posterity. It is not wasted space, there is built in accountability that comes with using the online platform and this incredible tool has the power make an impact on how students see themselves and others.

The greatest advantage of online learning is that the internet, because of its accessibility, has the power to overcome inequities in education that separate some students from reaching their potential. These students deserve a chance at a future, and unfortunately, they face many obstacles in obtaining one, not the least of which is the educators themselves, who are simply interested in having students in their classrooms who fear them enough to follow the rules, and over whom they can assert full control. This is a bit like being a prison guard, and not at all like being a teacher. For many of these students, their greatest struggle is the system. Online learning is a ray of light for the dark side of education.

On that note, my online mentoring activity was incredibly rewarding. It gave me a chance to see some of the exciting projects that are happening at High Tech High School. It also gave me an opportunity to research and learn about a very fascinating topic--water pollution. But for the questions my mentees posed to me online, I would have never learned as quickly or as much about this topic without the benefit of an in-class lecture and science text book.

Online collaboration is a wonderful way to learn, because the questions the students posed to me online lead to a very specific body of information, that tapped into online. For me to look over this topic without the aid of those questions, would have been like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but the work came to me already with legs and I learned tremendously from the students and my own research. Those questions also helped me to discover a very interesting theme, and that is how water and ocean dead zones from around the world reflect social injustice in the world. It's actually a topic I would love to gain more understanding about, and perhaps continue to research in my spare time.

While, unfortunately I didn't not have a lot of online interaction with the students, this collaboration was a very good idea, and I think I gained much more out of the experience, than the students I mentored. I really had no way of knowing if the posts I made were even being read or influencing the students' work in any way. My posts may have been too long for a high school student with a busy schedule. I think it would have been helpful if their teacher required them to respond to at least one post by their mentor. This would have helped in terms of feedback, but ultimately, I think the students were so involved with their project and their labs that the online portion of the class took a back seat. This is a really encouraging and good thing, and it has restored my faith in the public school system, because it really seemed like the students were having a lot of fun with their project. Education is fun and online learning is incredibly dynamic and fun and ultimately, online learning is a tremendous option for students who did not fit the mold of the traditional educational model.

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