In the beginning of the journey

At first I have to make a confession: I have never really been too fascinated by blogs and never thought I would be writing one. But here I am, writing my first blog text. The reason for blogging is that I just started an online course ONL181 about e-learning, and reflective blogging is one part of it. So here it starts. I don't know yet if I will become a blogger or not, we'll see.

My true passion at freetime is hiking. I love forests and arctic hills, lakes and rivers. (And yes, in Finland we really are surrounded by the nature, because the forrests cover more than 70 % of the area and lakes about 10 %.) Every new path is an adventure, no matter is it leading me into the eye of storm or to tender sunshine. It really doesn't matter for me, is it +25 C or -25 C, I always enjoy the time I can spend in the nature. I have been hiking so long that I know quite well the equipments I'll need on the journey. I have at least some kind of clue, what might happen and how to get prepared. This time it's different, I'm in the beginning of the path that is totally odd for me.

I should start to create an online course for my students who learn Finnish as a foreign language, but I have never even participated an online course. I hope this course I'm participating will give me both some knowledge and tools but also the students point of view. As a student on the online course I have already learned something important during the very first week: This far I have been happy for the very detailed instructions of the course. A lot of videos and examples how to get started. It' s easy to see how big role the good instructions plays. It's like a good map.

I also learned something about myself as a lerner: If I can't find some instruction or don't understand something, I get frustrated very quickly. For instance I didn't find any practical instructions about creating a new blog. I didn't understand how the address of the blog is made and so on. I only continued trying and solving out because I didn't have a choice. It also made me feel stupid. What if there were an instruction about the practise of starting a blog but I just didn't find it because of my poor skills? Good lesson to learn. Do I want to guide my students so well they would never feel stupid? Or is it too easy? Should I push them out of their comfort zone by forcing them to solve things out just by themselves? If I would choose not to chew everything ready for them, should it be shown somehow it was a pedagogical choice, not a mistake or something the teacher just forgot? Even the best map can't help you, if you don't know how to use a compass.

So many questions without answers, but I'm sure I will learn more and there are no absolute thruths. There is still something I know for sure: I have to get out of my comfort zone. So that's exactly what I'm doing right know, writing a blog, even in foreign language. I know my English isn't that good and I would never had written anything this public in English without the requirements of the course. But that's the reality for my Finnish language students as well: they have to speak and write even if they know for sure they are making a lot of mistakes. It's all about the courage. You have to dare. And I promise I will. I will follow this path too, even if it's a mystery for me, in some ways even a bit scary one.