First, an use of this technology: I have forwarded your Labnet message to
some people not on the list, who are starting forums as they will be facing
similar issues
I think you have hit an important point. In considering the use of
electronic forums in education we need to be very clear about what it is we
are evaluating.
We here seem to be closely relating reflective discourse and network
communications and relating the failure of one with the other.
There is a self conscious and forced nature to much of this that perhaps is
just a factor of where we are currently in our integration of technology --
the technology is not ubiquitous. Those teachers who do have connections
from HOME and do use the network to pursue their own interests - join
listservs related to hobbies, personal interests etc. are in a better
position to use this for reflective dialog on teaching. In the case of the
network communicating teacher, it becomes a tool they MAY choose when
involved in a professional development context and use with less outside
facilitation as the impetus to use it comes from the teacher him/herself.
The parallel of Ann's computer specialist group and Joyce's two groups is
the bottom up growth of each. In each case the users felt a need and the
technology provided a reasonable solution.
A question: the number %60 participation.. does this include lurkers or is
this active participants? Is this a core group or was it more flexible
participation as the need arose?
Laurie
> The exchange is interesting, and now I am thinking as Laurie asked
>about the LabNet experience. Let me hasten to point out that I am largely
>recalling LabNet I, which ended in 1993. I have been only an occasional
>lurker on LabNet II. Labnet I was a smaller group (the numbers here that
>follow are not exact), around 120 people. They were all physics teachers,
>and the focus was "What can help me do project enhanced teaching, and what
>is it anyway?"
> The teachers were added in successive years, and there was a core than
>had been there from the beginning. They were welcoming to the later
>teachers, so on the whole this age-stratification was productive.
> They met at summer workshops, and we had "reunions" at AAPT. We spent a
>lot of time telling them about their important role in an experiment, and
>our evaluation team made clea to them that we were going to use their
>comments etc. to check the validity of our conclusions.
> All this is to say that we structured the conversation a lot, providing
>content areas, a sense of cameraderie, and a sense of purpose.
>Nevertheless, the participation on the network was rarely higher than 60%
>annually. What we began to realize was that the network had to be part of
>a suite of tools for professionaly development, and that depending on the
>other tools a teacher habitially used, the network would take on
>correspondingly different values and uses for them.
> We also realized that there were aspects of the teachers' practice that
>they were just not accustomed to talking about in "public." This even
>means, in small focus groups of colleagues they had known for some years!
> Teaching practice is complex, and it is not all explicit in the
>practitioner's mind, and much of it is provisional or experimental, and
>the teacher has little time to evaluate all decisions. So there is muich
>about their practice, I would say, that they have not had time to come to
>terms with themselves, conceptually or "theoretically", therefore a forum
>(whether face to face or on-line) feelsfor many people (I believe) too
>much too soon.
> I happen to think that the best use of networks in education is for
>teachers, not students, but I think the network has to be well situated in
>a context of discussion and reflection on practice in other media, and as
>a regular part of the teachers' work habits.
> I think this complexity of the relation of practice to principles (What
>the teacher would like to do vs what they actually enact) may be at the
>heart of the difference between philatelic listserves and teacher
>listservs, where the focus is on pedagogy rather than the eschange of
>resources (for example)
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________________________________________
>_
> TEECH Electronic Discussion Forums in Professional Development
>
>To send a response, send mail to electronic-forums@list.terc.edu
>To unsubscribe from the list, send mail to teech_manager@list.terc.edu
>In the body of the message: unsubscribe electronic-forums <email-address>
>View or post messages from the Web at http://teech.terc.edu/modes/discussions/
>_______________________________________________________________________________
>_
--------------------------------------------------------------
Laurie Pattison-Gordon http://learning.bbn.com
lpg@bbn.com 617 873-2695
________________________________________________________________________________
TEECH Electronic Discussion Forums in Professional Development
To send a response, send mail to electronic-forums@list.terc.edu
To unsubscribe from the list, send mail to teech_manager@list.terc.edu
In the body of the message: unsubscribe electronic-forums <email-address>
View or post messages from the Web at http://teech.terc.edu/modes/discussions/
________________________________________________________________________________