Imaginative Constructs

The last school division I worked for was approximately 10 hours north of Edmonton. Depending on the season, this could fluctuate by 3 hours either way. The furthest school was another 3 hours from the school division office, down an unpaved logging road. The road led to a two room school house, serving the children of a transient population of loggers and men working on the oil rigs. The school itself consisted of two rooms teaching students from K-12. The principal and his wife worked hard to reach and teach a group of students that came and went throughout the year as families moved in and out of the work camp.

Why am I mentioning this school? This school division has one of the most advanced video conferencing setups in Alberta. It has been used as a model for other districts or provinces desiring to set up video conferencing. Our previous superintendent  traveled to Switzerland to promote and provide information on our set of suites and how they are used. It has been a massive commitment of resources and time for our school division and promoted as a huge benefit for our school division and something that puts us at the forefront of technology and education in this province. Despite this, I was not a video conferencing supporter. First of all, there are not enough video conferencing suites available to match the needs, their use tends to be limited to certain groups (for example, the elementary students in my school had no access to the suites even if we had wanted to use them), the suites need a great deal of technical support and require a larger amount of planning time for teachers. I also had issues with the way they were used and the types of students that would benefit from them. In our school division, some students were required to take the class as the time slots available with an actual teacher had been decreased. This resulted in students taking the video conferencing class as there were no spaces left in the actual class. There were teachers available at that school who could offer those courses but students who might have wanted to take the course with the teacher could not due to space restrictions. I also felt that the way the course were being offered over video conferencing, meant that only certain types of students would be able to benefit from that style of presentation – well motivated, visual/auditory learners that were very self disciplined. A small group indeed. Did these teachers use constructivist learning strategies to reach all types of learners or did they continue to teach the same way that they did in the class which was mostly lectured based with some labs interspersed throughout? These were my impressions as I talked to teachers who taught these courses and heard anecdotal stories describing the use of these video conferencing suites in our division.

However, as Danny Maas presented his findings, my perceptions began changing and shifting to see the possibilities and ways video conferencing can circumvent the disparagement in educational opportunities we are seeing between rural and urban communities. What I began to recognize was the ability for schools like Zama to offer courses to students no matter where they were. If a student wanted to take French 30, they were not hindered by geography. It also allowed students to avoid the interruption of their education. If they are taking a course in one school district, they don’t have to put that on hiatus because they have moved to an area that doesn’t offer the course they want. Are there still problems? Yes. As Danny Maas mentioned, we can not use this technology and continue to lecture students from a distance. I felt this was a very strong point being made from the presentation. For technologies, including video conferencing, to be effective, we need to change our views on effective teaching. We can not continue to just stand at the front of the class and lecture to students, filling them up with information. Students need to be active participants in their learning. Danny Maas pointed out that learning is a social experience and the power of video conferencing needs to drawn from students actively engaged in collaborative experiences through this medium. Indeed, his three keys to student engagement (focus on content and concepts, shared learning space and structured collaboration) were a reminder to me that though this may be a fairly new delivery model, the same important teaching principles still applied. Are teachers being provided with the training needed for this to happen? Or are they being thrust into these situations and reverting back to inferior teaching strategies that make it easier for them to handle this new form? This will be the key to make video conferencing an effective tool and more widely supported. Would this school have been able to support the next “Nobel laureate” before video conferencing? No. Could this school support them now, with the combination of effective teaching strategies and the power of connecting with the world? Yes! While there are still issues to iron out, this little school hidden away in forests of northern Alberta can provide students an education that is enriching and empowering.

~ by ihancock on July 8, 2007.