From the Cockpit

This is the view of my classroom from my cockpit. I run my class from behind two computers. The computer on the left runs on Windows. I use it to maintain attendance and to view the scholars' work on their webpages as their work appears on the Internet. The screen is a blog that speaks to the scholars and allows me to view their published work. On the right computer, a Mac, I run Remote Desktop that allows me to view each scholar's computer. While each scholar works, I can observe what is being done and when necessary take control to help fix something. While I sit and observe, I am able to speak to each scholar about hir work. The scholars often request I take a look and provide feedback or help with a question. I do get up and walk around and sit near a student when this is necessary, but for the most part we like it best when I'm in the cockpit. They know I'm observing and when they wander off to a site that is not relevant to our work, I can intervene and suggest the scholar quickly return to the task or do it myself.

I call what I do sometimes, brain surgery, because I can actually watch their brains work as they write and edit. Perhaps my cockpit is the brain of CyberEnglish as the left side is a Windows operating system and the right side is a MAC. Talk about power and control in a classroom.