Mediating Power: Distance Learning Interfaces, Classroom Epistemology, and the Gaze
Regardless of what people think about distance education and its effect on learning, I think that their point that online learning allows for people to go to school who would never have had that opportunity is one of the most important things we can take away from this article. I am a big advocate of education for all, and if that means the classroom has to come to some students, then so be it. Like they said, the importance lies in the creation of course goals and outcomes and as long as students are meeting those goals and outcomes, the method in which they get there (face to face versus online) doesn’t really matter.
I mean, it’s obvious from this study and others that whether or not teachers and students ever see each other isn’t exactly important. Students can still learn and meet the outcomes from online learning, but the tough decisions come from the curriculum designers who have to decide how and what to implement when it comes to designing the class and the technology required. I wonder though, are instructors in charge of creating online courses on their own, or do they have to meet with special course developers to make sure they are meeting the needs of students through online collaboration? I am sure that for this class Steve was able to develop the course on his own because he has such a huge repertoire of online programs, but for people who don’t but still have the task of teaching online courses, do they have support systems to turn to? It’s interesting to think about because I know I am getting the most from this class because steve is so highly informed and educated on the topic and on online teaching and learning, but if other classes don’t have such tech-savvy teachers, how do they get a quality education?
As for methods of learning, sure, problem-posing methods of teaching and learning will always be more important and valuable than the banking model of learning, because students are not empty vessels just waiting to be filled with knowledge. In order to truly learn and understand, students must be able to understand a problem and solve it. I agree that the way an online course is set up and the background experience of a teacher is important for distance education, and that those instructors really need to think about the implications of everything they do much more than a face to face teacher.
Digital Underlife in the Networked Writing Classroom
Derek N. Mueller
I really liked his introductory paragraph that “The formal scene of teaching and learning ha, for everyone involved, changed: teachers are evermore frequently positioned to make decisions—to act—on digital underlife, on the distal and potentially transgressive discursive activities proliferated by emerging technologies, because their work-space hovers near a saturation point of crossed signals and converging wavelengths supported by portable electronic devices and wireless computing.” The first things that came to mind is 1) I have been there- wanting to pull the plug on my students who were messing around on chat or Google Earth or whatever program we had on the school computers and b) I’ve had a class that allowed us to go on whatever sites we wanted, but assumed we were listening as well. I’ve been on both sides of the debate and while on each side, I felt differently about what was happening. As a teacher, I wanted to pull the plug. Take students back to the classroom where they didn’t have access to such powers that they couldn’t control, but as a student who has messed around on email and facebook quickly and quietly while in class, I never once stopped paying attention to the teacher, and was actually paying more attention to the teacher while on those applications that I was in the minutes leading up to my going online.
I don’t allow laptops in my classroom. Students don’t need them and if we do need access to the Internet for whatever reason, my computer has it. We can look something up, project on the overhead screen, and get the information together. Yet, as I do this, students are on their cell phones checking their text messages, never quite satisfied with what is happening in the classroom regardless of what we are doing in class. They are so used to being entertained in five different ways at once, sometimes I think it would take a circus to keep them entertained and “on top of it all” in the classroom.
I like that article refers to the face book, texting, and iPod problem as an attentional crisis, because that’s exactly what we have on our hands. This digital underlife that pushes the rules, roles, and boundaries need to be dealt with in order for teachers and students to continue on. What must be done, like he points out, is that teachers have to embrace the digital underlife and find ways to bring it into the classroom, like the Twitter Project in Texas. We can’t just altogether ban it like the talks of banning Wikipedia, it’s not practical at this point, but we do need to find a way to make education and technology meet and assist in students learning.
