Hi Amanda!

I made connections in your blog post to my own experiences with online education, in particular your experience with SIDES. I too signed up for SIDES during high school and ended up having to drop the course because of the lack of motivation and connection to the material, teacher and peers. I wonder if in this paragraph you could add some ways that you think authentic connections could be made in an online course setting?

I thought you did a good job at making connections to our readings with the video and graphic you provided with regards to the Social Presence Model. I wonder with this topic if you could elaborate further on the importance of the five aspects of the Social Presence Model and how the social needs of students can be met by using this model.

I thought your paragraph on safety online and opening learning spaces was clear. I also related to your comment on the platforms being hosted outside of Canada, as I didn’t fully understand the importance of that either. Regan and Jesse’s article definitely opened my eyes to the factor of data safety and ethics as well.

The final paragraph touches base on what you hope to learn going forward in this course, which addresses the blog prompt nicely. I also would like to learn more about locally hosted resources and how to build connections with students online in a safe way! Overall, I really enjoyed reading your blog post and think that perhaps you could add more examples of how you think teachers can build safe interactions in open and online learning spaces.