I am trying to make a decision. I am beginning work on a revision of our textbook (Integrating technology for meaningful learning) and I am trying to decide how much to include about teaching online (remotely if you prefer). This decision has ramifications for how I spend time and whether the content produced is deemed relevant by those who make decisions regarding what textbook they assign in their classes. Clearly, nearly all k12 educators have now had a taste of teaching at a distance. Most had no preparation for working this way and neither did the students and families they served. The timing of my decision is awkward. Will the future bring a complete return to normal or will some of what is now the new normal carry over? Hard to say isn’t it? K12 education is very traditional as a rule, but so many say many aspects of normal (e.g., shopping, office work, entertainment) will likely be altered so why not K12 teaching and learning? Anyway, this is what I am thinking about.
It is not that I am inexperienced in teaching online. Working in higher education engaged with preservice and inservice teachers, I worked at a distance a lot. Often I went to where teachers were or at least near where they were. This was mostly a function of teaching grad students in education or providing professional development workshops. Mostly I drove, but because I worked most of my career at a university with a leading aviation program sometimes I flew. When I was lucky, we took a jet. Technology changed this approach and from specialized television to the personal computer approaches we now all use, we met from wherever we were. I have had no experiences teaching young learners in any of these experiences and while my experiences may have focused on preparing educators to use technology, little involved preparing educators themselves to teach at a distance. In evaluating the content I explored with educators that might be relevant, the one topic that seems relevant might be the recent interest in “flipping the classroom”.
I have been exploring traditional sources to see what others have done. There are some sources and the anecdotal accounts collected from recent experiences. Too many of the recent anecdotes seem to be negative – too much work, lack of engagement, problems with equality of access, etc. Organizations one might expected to have offered guidance to the preparation of future and practicing teachers seem to be scrambling just as I am. For example, ISTE seems to have little existing guidance when it comes to the standards that might be expected to guide teacher preparation focused on this situation. There just hasn’t been enough need with general instruction and niche topics – credit recovery, access to unique courses, home schooling, etc., providing the areas with the most development and guidance. What of this can be used to guide a possible new normal? I wonder what other textbook authors are considering at this point. Will they stick with traditional topics or will they make an effort to incorporate new themes?
Anyway, I likely will write about this topic more as I decide what I will do.
I have been exploring a bit and I thought I would offer one resource I found interesting. When I made the transition in my own experience going from driving or flying to workng with educators online, I read a couple of books to get some ideas.
Kearsley, G. (2000). Learning and teaching in cyberspace. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Ko, S., & Rossen, S. (2001) Teaching online: A practical guide. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. McKenzie, J. (2001, March). How teachers
I list these references only because in searching for work on the preparation of K12 educators to teach at a distance, I encountered one of these authors/researchers again.
Kearsley, G., & Blomeyer, R. (2004). Preparing K—12 Teachers to Teach Online. Educational Technology, 44(1), 49-52.
Reading this article (the journal no longer exists, but university libraries likely can provide access), I found the advice and predictions quite enlightening. I find what could be described as futurists’ recommendations to be quite interesting when examined in hindsight. Here are a few things I thought others might enjoy.
The authors examined who might be suited to distance education and the skills and attributes that would be important. The authors commented on the likely workload of content preparation and 24/7 availability. They warned that educators interested in this approach be prepared to sit at a computer for several hours at a time. Keyboarding skills should be well developed.
The strategies likely to be successful online included: student-centered activities; problem-based learning; collaborative learning; and peer evaluation.
The authors also recommended that educators should have experiences themselves learning at a distance as part of their preparation. This is a recommendation I have seen many times in the literature predicting whether K12 educators would make much use of technology with their students leading to questions about how educators involved in preservice teacher training made use of technology themselves.
One final issue that I admit I had not considered involved certification. What exactly should be experiences/skills involved in the certification of educators teaching at a distance and what should be done to assure that there was some commonality in these expectations from one state to the next. Commonality was more critical than with more traditional instruction because students would often be from different states.
