If you're like me, you're shaking your head in disbelief simply from reading the title of this column. Of course, if you're really like me, you'll keep reading out of pure curiosity.

After moving to the Southwest to chair the Math department at an online K-12 school and to thaw out from far too many winters in the climactic deep freeze, I was quickly lulled into the fantasy that online education solves all classroom management issues known to the teaching profession. This fragile fantasy that I had crafted was duly shattered when a colleague entered my office one afternoon laughing hysterically and proclaiming that he had officially heard everything.

My strong innate sense of curiosity forbade me from forgoing inquiry as to what might possibly be so humorous as to merit the uproarious laughter and the interruption of my monotonous afternoon, and I was soon rewarded by my colleague explaining that a student had just unashamedly declared to him that his dog ate his online work! The thoroughly-chewed CD without which the student could not complete his assignments had arrived that very afternoon.

This incident, humorous as it was, jolted me into the harsh reality that online education did not solve all of the woes of classroom management as I had led myself to believe. While the majority of classroom management issues diminish significantly and while some actually do disappear in the online environment, there are still human interactions involved. Life is still unpredictable. Things still go wrong while working online. Indeed, a new set of classroom management challenges arises in the online environment. For example, Internet connections fail during uploads, and system upgrades require server downtime forbidding the submission of completed assignments. More significantly, work habits are magnified as students must be self-motivated in the online environment; those who are not are seldom successful regardless of their inherent abilities and academic prowess. From the teaching perspective, the teacher's loss of visual communication can be troubling.

Modern technology can mitigate things such as the visual issue, but it cannot fix people. Humans are still humans with needs, desires, and attitudes that while not perhaps as blatantly displayed as the student who brings a gun to the classroom are nonetheless manifested in a variety of ways even from a distance. The task of the online instructor is to find a way to connect emotionally with students just as would be necessary in the physical classroom. It is still classroom management, though the form is radically different.