Reflection 6: (Podcast) Teachers are Talking

Teachers are Talking Episode 18

In this episode, they had a guest speaker who teaches online classes to pre-service teachers (Dean). The podcast was about whether or not students benefit/learn from the online classes versus traditional classes. Dean talked about how they do most of their work online but they do have a traditional class once a month. The class he was teaching was a technology education class. One of the women said she did not think online classes were appropriate because some students need someone sitting next to them to show them how to do things. Me personally, I would call that hand-holding and say the student was just being lazy. Dean said that it had nothing to do with that persons learning style but rather their attitude and I have to agree with him. He also used the term lifelong learner. (Remember these are pre-service teachers were talking about) Dave said that a lifelong learner needs to be able to find resources on their own and learn to assist their own learning. Teachers make thousands of decisions per day, they need to be able to figure out the right solution by themselves because they will almost never have someone next to them to tell them how they should handle a situation in the classroom. Also since the class is a technology class I do not see anything wrong with it being an online class as long as the instructor makes themselves available for questions. The class also allows students to build their own professional network of support through things like Twitter, which we do in this class! Dean mentioned that there are some things that are better done in face to face classrooms and that is why he has them meet once a month for class. He says this also allows the students to work together face to face and builds more personable relationships for the online work. I think Dean’s class seems well organized and I think he seems like a pretty smart guy. I found myself nodding along with Dean every time he voiced his opinion! The only thing I disagreed with Dean about was the fact that the students enrolling in his course were not aware in advanced that it was an online course. I think students should definitely know that kind of information before deciding to enroll in the course. Dean didn’t really give a reason to why they were not told in advanced