Re: [WikiEducator] Why classrooms are important?

Joyce . McKnight Sun, 13 Jan 2013 20:22:29 -0800

Good point Kirby (Michael Moore, a well-known distance education theorist and my doctoral adviser at the Pennsylvania State University) created a theory of instructional distance that asserts one can be "interactionally close" even over long distances and one can also be "interactionally distant" although physically close such as in huge lecture-style classes at large universities. Our whole wikieducator community and related OER-u efforts are a good example of people who are rather close interactionally although spatially distant. All the best. Joyce McKnight

-----wikieducator@googlegroups.com wrote: -----

To: wikieducator@googlegroups.com
From: kirby urner
Sent by: wikieducator@googlegroups.com
Date: 01/11/2013 12:15PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEducator] Why classrooms are important?

I teach one-on-one by means of comments, cues, other feedback, but it's all in writing. This was the old idea of a "correspondence school" but with the Internet it all happens much faster.

Such distance education schools are in addition to traditional classrooms where people meet a teacher face to face. They are not a replacement. Traditional classrooms are not going away. It's not either / or.

Only some subjects and only some types of student (and/or teacher) are amenable to such schooling methods. I teach computer programming, which is all about keyboard and screen anyway.

Having the teacher be physically distant does not mean there's no personal attention. One need not remain anonymous. On the other hand, if one is shy, or has no local access to such teachers, but does have Internet connectivity... technology here offers a sympatico (congenial) solution.

Kirby

On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 1:10 AM, atsker <ats...@gmail.com > wrote:

Formal Education is imparted to the students through educational institutions, which acquire life in its classroom through the process of actual transaction between the teacher and the students. ’ According to Mahatma Gandhi,True Education ‘has to be directed towards the formation of the human person in view of his final end and the good of the society to which he belongs, and in the duties of which he will as an adult have a share.’ When keeping this view,classroom transaction has a paramount importance in the process of moulding the future generations for a purposeful life based on values.
What are the things that should be transacted? The blind rule is to follow the curriculum. The word ‘curriculum ‘ comes from the Latin word ‘currere’ which was the name for definite marked roads arranged to run chariot races in Rome.In schools, children are given the readymade curriculum, of course framed by eminent educators. Education is the chariot, curriculum is the road, and the teacher is the charioteer. But why these definite roads?Each student has to go through a different road inevitably,atleast that is what life teaches us.Each of them may be coming from a different background and equipped with a different psychology.So how can a common coursework fit the frame?While neglecting the ‘thought of the flaw of the system’ the answer to the question lies in the hands of the teacher.It should be the flexibility and serviceability of the teacher to find those distinct paths,perhaps for all the students he or she handles.And for that to happen effectively,the teacher should have a dominant role in selecting his or her students.
Regarding the technical handling of the classroom,the teacher, playing the role of an effective communicator ,is urged to devise newer strategies for stimulus variation,focusing,prompting questions,redirecting and for overcoming various barriers he confronts.He should be with constant preparation to avoid a banal class.He has to be decisive every movement and should use psychological principles for proper management of the class, rather than resorting to oppressive methods. There can be negative comments and naïve judgements on the students part.He has to manage the individual temperaments of the 35 or 40 students , as well as maintain a ‘collective thinking ‘of the class.
A symptomatic world , demands all people to be teachers .It is the duty of the society to its social environment. .The field demands audacity and a lot of patience but the real adventure in the classroom transactions, is in the unforeseen result it can bring about in the future.

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Re: [WikiEducator] Why classrooms are important?

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