TOPIC/ICON

I personally have had no experience with TOPIC/ICON, but frankly, I'm terrified to teach it. Kevin said that he had a good experience with this as a teacher, but everyone I have ever talked to hated actually taking the class. I'm a tutor for Tech students, and I honestly hate the program from what I have seen as well. Thus far, comments on my students' papers are generic, impersonal, and overall not thought-out.

I think that the best thing that I can do as a future teacher under this program, albeit I am very worried about my students hating me for making them work under this program, is for me to try to make my experience as a Classroom Instructor AND Distance Instructor, or grader, or whatever the term is, as positive and personal as possible.

I think that this program would be much more manageable if the students were somehow ensured that their comments and grades would be personal, instead of simply being handed shortcut responses. I do think that it will be a struggle for me to read and analyze every paper that I am handed, but isn't that my responsibility when I take on this assistantship as a Graduate student?

I think that this program will give me a great experience that I can use when I teach high school in the future, but I think that I have to be very careful to manage my time well. The English program I am working on will only take me a year and a half, so everything will be pretty rushed. However, I believe that if I can effectively manage my time and responsibilities, I can put forth the required effort in grading students' papers so that hopefully they can have a more positive experience in TOPIC/ICON.

Technology and Education

I absolutely hated the MOO online class. No one got to speak coherently, and no one could follow the discussion. I think that yes, technology should be integrated into the classroom, but if we used that system in our high school classrooms, it would never work. As 20-something-year-olds, we couldn't keep on task on the discussion, so how could we possibly expect high school students to?

Once people are in an online chat room, people are able to control the floor whenever they want, and it becomes virtually impossible to follow what anyone is saying. I think that this could be a good idea if people were able to monitor who spoke, and how often, but with this program, people are not able to do this.

I think that online classes are pointless and there is still a reason that books are around. They have survived this many centuries because they offer academic value and worth, and that will not change any time soon, regardless of the advancing technology. We still read books today, when computers and the internet are available to everyone, so why would that change 20, 50 years from now?