roundtable
with Mario Rotta
It is necessary to involve to the highest degree all the school subjects,
being aware of some progressive forms of introduction of new tecnologies
at school. We should bear in mind that there's a real possibility to involve
other people when:
- one works in a collaborative group;
- one designs and implements;
- what has been designed and implemented can actually be used.
The knowledge of new techniques help one be open to new possibilities as knowing a tecnology helps you in using it, but understanding its potentialities helps one to learn it.
In introducing new tecnologies in/at school some progressive steps should be taken. There should be two early levels in the introduction of the tecnologies that should require no particular change in the usual way of teaching and learning.
The first level should be to persuade EVERYBODY that new technologies, especially the net, are useful as a form of support for traditional everyday educational activities. A widespread use of new tecnologies (one for all the use of a word processor) might allow teachers to publish study material on line.
At a higher level (second) teachers might design and publish interactive multimedia materials; this requires higher tecnological skills and most of all the ability to "rethink" the learning materials.
Starting from a third level there should be an improvement towards forms
of interaction in which come into play both contents and people. In this
stage, that can be called one of sharing groups, the materials online
go along with discussion groups, in which students and teachers dialogue
among them or with other teachers or experts. In practice this stage consists
in the use of forums or mailing lists to discuss issues. For example,
students from one or more classes, with teachers as tutors, are invited
to analyse some materials (from printed books or Internet) and then discuss
them, perhaps following the input of tutors. Students are then asked to
pubblish a more structured reflection in a shared archive or forum. There
are not any high skill required: e-mail, ftp, etc.
A survey of ours showed that at stage 2 half of teachers are not willing to arrive, while at level 3 at the present time only 1 - 2 teachers out of 10 have arrived.
With levels four and five there should be the creation of virtual classes.
Level 4 can be called "asyncrounous virtual class" (based on
e-mail, forum, and other asyncronous forms of communication) and level
5 "integrated virtual class", in which asyncronous moments alternate
with syncronous ones.
While at levels 1 and 2 technology integrates the traditional forms of
teaching, at level 3 technolgy expands it and at levels 4 and 5 it assists
it. At level 4 and 5 only 3 out of 100 have arrived at the present time.
The most important improvement is to arrive at level 3, because it implies a redefinition of the traditional roles at school. As far as evaluation of these activities is concerned, it must be said that it is not that student learn more if engaged in online activities, they just learn different abilities.In the perspective of involving more and more teachers in the use of educational tecnologies some steps could be suggested:
a) convice everybody that has already produced or that is going to produce materials that could be used by others to pubblish them in the site of the school. It is enough to publish a list of sites for every subject that could be of any help.
b) Convince, at least some collegues, to start thinking how to elaborate materials that could support their lessons, or students' homework or researches.
c) Third step could be to the creation of a mailing list to discuss specific issues. These discussions could be a starting point for more complex activities
Online
interview held on the 3D world of Edutopia on Eduverse, May 30, 2001
