Despite some teachers’ inability to recognize the magic of CE, some teachers like me have been forever changed by experiencing it. As I begin my new job, I know that I will be constrained by my environment, as Jan mentions. I will not be able to have a CE classroom with computers at every desk, but at the bare minimum my students should and will be in the computer lab as often as possible to share ideas and collaborate, where they are being empowered instead of dependent. Hopefully my brief time under your guiding wings (where I know now that I didn’t open mine enough) has enabled me to be one of the few who “gets it.”

I agree with Dawn and with Ted, but in different ways. We’re all somewhat constrained in our use of cyberEnglish with what our schools or teaching environments will support – it’s extremely situational. At both my Chicago-suburban schools (Roosevelt and Harper College (that one’s 2-year), my administration/department/has chosen not to allow student web pages on our server, so we don’t even try using class time to create them. As an adjunct (part-time instructor), I don’t fight City Hall.

Further, college teaching “gives” me the students for two 75-minute periods per week, plus one hour of office time, should they choose to drop in…difficult, as both schools are commuter schools with most students working part-time, if not full-time. I have department objectives to meet in both courses (I move to Eng. 100 (basic writing/developmental) face-to-face fall 2007; online, Jan. 2008 and subsequently – this, at Harper College. So I need to adapt my teaching style in different ways to meet those goals and to prepare the students for the competencies they should acquire by the end of the semester I have with them.

Simply put, cyberEnglish – or cyberANYthing – demands a new way of looking at instruction – as shared knowledge, empowering knowledge, rather than memorization of concepts and procedures. In my classes, our primary goal (as stated by me on Day 1 of a semester, but “bought into” by essentially all the students) is to become a supportive community of writers. Me too. (I am a professional free-lance writer and have been for 60 years.)

With that concept, the instructor becomes primarily a facilitator, creating learning opportunities, being a learner himself/herself, promoting collaborative learning and sharing, and setting the classroom climate. Exciting, invigorating, and–it very often works!