The month of October had me trying something completely different. In Greater Essex County, there are always a large selection of after school computer professional development workshops. It's a real credit to professionalism that they are always well subscribed and often over subscribed.

However after school commitment is really that; a commitment on a number of fronts on the behalf of the presenter, participants, and most importantly those who families and significants others who remind us that, when we get home, the microwave will heat up what everyone else had for dinner the first time around.

In October, one of the PD workshops was conducted online. Instead of everyone gathering at the pre-appointed time and location, the workshop was held in a fashion that lets participants work through things at their own time and location.

If this article had a title, it would be something like "Where in the world is this workshop?" It was truly an example of how the Internet makes the world so much smaller. Here I was, conducting a workshop from a computer in Anderdon Township for people in various locations throughout the county. Heck, some of the participants might actually live in Kent county for all that I know. Our course was hosted on a server in California and maintained by a teacher from Thailand who has a New York city fax number. The only clue to this international flavour was the fact that the times of the messages were in Pacific time.

I "met" David when he happened to drop into the GEC Computers in the Classroom website and he dropped me a message asking me to write for the International Educators' Network on a monthly basis. I agreed and this started a relationship with iteachnet.org. There are all kinds of resources and eventually I took advantage of one of the offers which was to participate in an online course through there.

A number of us did, and I guess the fact that I hosted my own course there, indicates that I passed! The course is conducted using an open source package known as Manhattan. It contains all of the teacher / student tools for conducting a session. Since it's Internet based, it was entirely appropriate for use where related activities themselves use the Internet. It seemed like a natural for the workshop "Internet In Your Classroom".

Things I learned? First, conducting an online course is considerably more intensive than doing it with full frontal teaching. Instructions and assignments have to be definitively written and proofread. You don't get a second chance to explain what your students are to read and/or to do. Since their activities are asynchronous, the lessons / assignments have to be ready to go when they are ready.

It was a very positive experience for me. Having done it once ensures that it will be offered again. I'd hate to think that I went through all that preparation for a one time offering.

Feedback from the participants was positive during the workshop. Now that it's over, they'll get one final shot at me. As with all teaching, that's where the make or break comes.

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