Vive la Collaboration!

Gail and Jen at OESIS Boston 2013

When I am talking with colleagues at my school about teaching online, one of the things I try to convey to them is that you really can create meaningful relationships with students online. My online students are as much "my kids" as my face to face students are. What I didn't expect was to create a professional relationship that led to a face to face friendship. But that's what happened, thanks to VHS and the OESIS (Online Education Symposium for Independent Schools) Conference in Boston this October.

My new friend Jen Weeks, French Teacher and Academic Technology Coordinator at Kingswood Oxford School in CT is an expert at online learning as she has done all of her graduate coursework online. It was through her graduate work that Jen enrolled in VHS's 21st Century Teaching Series Courses. One of those modules, Becoming an Online Teacher, pairs participants with a master teacher already teaching a VHS course.

Jen was assigned to co-teach my French Language and Culture course in the spring of 2013. As a co-teacher, Jen facilitated discussions, assessed the students' work and built a relationship with the students through her comments and the resources she provided to them. As we co-taught, Jen and I conversed and got to know one another virtually through various online tools such as Skype and Google Hangout.

Then this fall, VHS asked me to participate in a panel presentation at the OESIS conference where Jen was attending. We recognized each other immediately at the first keynote and spent the rest of the conference comparing notes on our technology and language experiences, visiting and even dining out at a French Bistro. French teachers who are also Technology Coordinators are rare, so finding that we have virtually the same job (pun intended), including coordinating online learning at our schools, made it all the more fun and meaningful.

We're now planning an online collaboration between our French classes. So what started online, then became face to face, has now come full circle. It just goes to show you - you never know where online learning will take you.

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