My Blog-My Vision Posting: 4/3

I see that many instructors are apprehensive about teaching via teleconference because of the extra load it causes them and not adequate compensation for the extra work. I have been in a teleconference setting where the home class was teleconferenced to other areas and we interacting with each other. We had to push buttons to talk so that our classmates could hear use talk as we made comments. I can see the added pressure that the instructor would have in dealing with twice as many students and from a distance. I believe this could be resolved by reduce the instructors work load if they had to teach teleconference class as well as compensate them with an increase in the amount of money allotted for teaching these types of classes.

“Experience over the past 50 years indicates that any application of television—or any technology—that compromises the teacher’s traditional role in the classroom inevitably will engender resistance” (p. 77). I experience this when I am worried about how much I should reveal about the amount of technology I use in the traditional classroom setting. There are some traditional instructors who would frown on the use of WebCT for taking quizzes, exams and having discussion postings.

“Television’s primary role in education is not to supplant teachers. Rather, it can be adapted to supplement their capacity to impart audible and visible information, thus enhancing the fuel that powers the teaching-learning process and consequently the outcome” (p. 78). I believe this and use movies to portray certain things I am trying to teach in psychology. There are some things a movie can show more realistically than I could ever show any other way.

The above is reiterated in the perception “Television’s fundamental role in the classroom is to allow teachers to eliminate the compromise of using verbal descriptions of anything that can be seen, thus enhancing the quality of the information they make available to the learners, enhancing the outcome of the teaching-learning process” (p. 80).

I have experienced the perception “The mind coupled with a computer infinitely amplifies its capacity to perform the basic cognitive functions. Yet, there is no configuration of microchips that replicates the intricate, vital interface between mind and emotions―a basic limitations of computers” (p. 87). I have seen this in communication with email where you cannot express emotions and cannot tell what people are trying to express because you are not face-to-face with them knowing really how they feel because you can see it in there face.

Romano, M. T. (2003). Empowering Teachers with Technology. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.