As a teacher it is pretty needy to every now and then make a swap of roles and become a learner instead. This has become very obvious since the ONL 181 commenced. And of most importance is that one gets some insights in to how it is to work with people you’ve never met, and together have to solve problems  and present the outcomes of some discussions. Not just are you expected to work with the assignment, there is, as an immigrant, also a matter of learning the not so familiar cyber-langauage.

In the scenario for the weeks assignment one of the most central aspects of learning in an IT-environment was emphasized, that is the feeling of insuffiency. This goes not just for the technical part of it, using the right buttons on the keyboard, but also reading the course instructions the right way. I just dislike coming to a meeting, or a lecture, and having misread and misunderstood the documents. This felt especially significant as I was assigned group leader for the first couple meetings with the other course participants. It is quite hard for your self-confidence when you are trying to lead a group discussion and all you hear is yourself spluttering in English, with no sense of direction that creates a feeling of wasting everyone’s time. But, there was a chance to recover as between the meetings there was time to do some reading and watching some of the YouTube-films. Without doubt, I could experience an increasing feeling of consolation after watching the films. I could see that for the following meeting, that I also was leading, there had been an adaptation to the method of meetings with headphones on. And, not least, there was more substance in the discussion that most likely reduced everyones anxiety.

To flip the coin here, I’d like to scrutinize the course instructions I’ve written throughout the years. Writing instructions takes a life-time to master and I still get misread occasionally, but I’ve found there is also an aspect of neglecting to read. In an age of cyber-solutions to everything reading takes too long, as things just have to happen so swiftly and preferably through an app. Most likely I have forced students and course participants to get out of their comfort zones when I not emphasize the use of apps, that they pretty often expect. But now, in this course, it is pay-back as I’ve been filling my blog with  words and I, quite eagerly, look forward to getting into Twitter next week. Maybe pigs can fly…….?