Curiosity

I am three weeks into an on-line U.S. History class for high school juniors. It is a pilot class, randomly selected students and provides an opportunity for students to pick up a seventh class. Enough review. I started with thirty students but never had contact with one student and still have not but that will give me twenty-nine. I sent over five hundred e-mails (group and individual) in these first three weeks and, as of Friday (Jan. 21st) have logged over sixty hours of time for a "one period class." If, like me, you are math challenged, that would would transfer to 100 hour work weeks if I were attempting to handle five classes. As the software trainer kept repeating last fall, "next year will get easier."
Observations about the class:
1. most students do not like to work independently
2. many students are not curious about technology (how it works, how can I make it easier)
3. only one student made a suggestion for better organizing material, I adapted it and received numerous positive comments (until a student came in yesterday to drop and told me I was just too unorganized, amazing, they had never looked that the big folder is titled "assignments for chapter 20!" )
4. repeat of number 2, our youngest son (now 28), was forced to purchase his own computer at an early age because he kept breaking into the programs on our Apple IIE and later, our early IBM and altering the program to suit his young needs, today, we want everything done for us, I have a small group of students who are into everything (we can track them) and a large group who are into nothing
5. I had failed to understand how little I actually prepared my face to face students to be independent thinkers, researchers, or workers
6. I had failed to act on my failures to teach at a higher level, over the years I had allowed the students to wear me down
7. I had failed to act on what I knew needed to be changed (NCLB doesn't help this), now most students are simply test score data to be manipulated (apologies, teachers are to use interventions) so that test scores go up, why? (another whole post)
8. to end on a positive, students who are doing their work, communicating regularly with me, reading my responses to their discussion threads......they are doing great, number of insightful responses is growing daily and I will continue to modify what I am doing (oh, getting rid of textbooks for e-books will take time, I put the textbook on-line, most stopped and wanted a print version, some listen to the audio version while getting ready for school, some listen while working out

Any suggestions from on-line teachers of high school students please send me an e-mail.