Serendipity and the teachable moment - Colloquium

Technos: Quarterly for Education and Technology, Spring, 2002 by Sarah Irvine Belson

After reading my American University colleague Frank Connolly's article, "I'm Doing Better but Feeling Worse: Serendipity, Unintended Consequences, and I.T." [see pages 26-31], I began to think about the consequences of email and other technologically based communication tools in my own field of education. I've put forth some ideas about how collaborative technologies have impacted my own teaching of future teachers and how they perhaps have determined the types of relationships I have with my education students. On the one hand, I may be so new to the profession of professing that I don't know what it was like before all this started. On the other hand, I think that I might be preparing a new generation of teachers to interact with their students through technologically enhanced lives. As we move toward more and more teachers taking advantage of online courses and using technology as their main means of communication with their professors, we need to be even more conscious about getting to know our students during the valuable face-to-face time we share with them.

Technology in Teacher Education

For the most part, educators believe that technology is a good thing for children in K-12 classrooms. The need to prepare teachers who are technically savvy and can make good decisions about how and why to use technology is a prominent goal in the current education agenda. Preparing tomorrow's teachers to use technology is an ongoing initiative from the U.S. Department of Education (known as PT3, www.pt3.org). One main method of preparing these future classroom teachers to learn about technology's role is through modeling our own use of the Internet, discussion boards, email, and educational software. Modeling the use of technology to pre-service has been proven to be an important role for faculty in various research studies (Albion 1996; Becker 1994; Downes 1993). As we choose to use devices such as discussion boards and email as tools to model the use of technology as a communication medium, we need to be cognizant of two things: first, what the impact of this choice will be, and second, the realities of the students adopting our methods.

My students tend to agree that using a discussion board in their college classes is a good way for them to think about the issues we might not have time to discuss in class. But they believe that their own K-12 students won't be using the same tools. For example, during an online discussion, one student wrote:

   I don't think there's a risk of a K-12 classroom being totally replaced by
   computer programs, but I don't think we should totally discount the idea of
   a virtual classroom, which is basically what we're doing here using
   Blackboard for these discussions. There are online degree programs now
   linked to reputable graduate programs like Syracuse University, and at the
   collegiate level I think that resources like this can be really useful. In
   K-12, kids are going through all sorts of developmental stages that really
   rely on having social interaction with both their peers and adult role
   models, so the classroom is usually the best place for them to be. It's
   nice to think that in unusual cases where a kid couldn't get to school,
   they might still be able to interact with teachers and learn material
   through technology.

Nevertheless, students do feel that they miss connecting with their professors and peers when they use email and discussion boards exclusively. A student in an online teacher certification program told me that when she told the professor (via email) about a personal problem she was having (her father had just had a stroke) and that she needed extra time, the professor's response was perfunctory--she didn't think he really "cared" about her as a person. She conceded that she didn't really know the professor, so she didn't know how to interpret his email response.

Students in my courses agree that getting to know the professor is important. Here's what one had to say about the topic on our discussion board:

   I feel that taking online courses in college would be more beneficial than
   in middle school and high school, ... [where] children are learning how to
   be social with their peers on a one-on-one basis. These online classes
   would be more convenient for college-age students, especially if they have
   children, and want to spend time at home with them instead of running out
   to classes, but even then you still don't have that special relationship
   with your peers. You don't get to know the other people in your classes
   because you don't get to see their facial expressions. I know that when I'm
   teaching, I won't have a lot of time to take my re-certification courses,
   but that I won't take them in an online environment. I need to see my
   professor (in person; I don't like those Web cams) to know what they really
   mean. I also need to see other people when I talk or do a practice lesson.
   I don't know how you get real feedback online.