Morphology :: MOO Teaching Technology Education Essays

MorphologyEverything we experience today in the mode of a limit, or as foreign, or as unbearable allow for have returned to the serenity of the positive. And whatever currently designates this exteriority to us whitethorn well one day designate us. Only the enigma of this exteriority will remain --- Michel FoucaultIf the architecture of MOOs replicates real-life places like classrooms, we can be assured that real-life problems embody there, too. Educators accept to be aw ar of how and in what forms these problems take shape online, in addition to knowing how to handle them. It is not easy to find answers in the mountains of popular culture hype and mass media reports on the mesh. Depending on what magazines and newspapers you read, network technology is either the salvation or the demise of civilization. Certainly the quick growth of access to the Internet has parents and educators wringing their hands over how to protect children and savants online from al to the highest deg ree of the same dangers they face in the physical world. Yet one of the most encouraging aspects of the growth and scope of the Internet is the opportunity for all of us to contribute to the social construction of ethical guidelines in the development and exercise of Internet-based technologies in educational settings.There is a fine line betwixt giving students the latitude to be creative online and setting them loose with no ethical boundaries whatsoever. Just as in traditional classroom settings, harsh sense and proper preparation go a long way of life toward anticipating problems and resolving them. It is not necessary to blame the whole of cyberspace and thereby throw the virtual baby out with the virtual bathwater. There are ways to manage the fluidity associated with identity, speed, and open access on the Internet. We need to avoid the rhetoric of negative cyber-hyper and engage instead in arable discussion about the Internet in terms of its positive touch on individua l and collective lives. Especially with respect to the use of Internet technology in education, we should do so rhetorically, going slowly, doing our homework, so to speak, onward we make claims about the dangers of the Internet.Secondly, and perhaps less metaphorically, real-time teaching as well as creates real-time homework for teachers. The MOO will change the way you concern to your students, and teachers may find that they must give up their principle orientation toward the individual student (Porter). Teletechnology mixes new modes of intelligibility (and new codes of behavior) with new pedagogical contracts between teacher and student, and it alike effectively outs the faculty in ways that they may find unnerving.