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Telecollaboration
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 When
he proclaimed in 1922 that the motion picture would replace textbooks
in schools, Thomas Edison began what became a long list of incorrect
predictions regarding the telecollaboration
that would revolutionize teaching. To date, none of this telecollaboration
— from film to television — has lived up to the expectations
of school telecollaboration enthusiasts. Computers have not even
been able to show conclusive records of improving education.
The research of late, including a study at the University of Munich
which included 174,000 students from 31 different countries, indicated
that students who use computers more often performed worse academically
than those who used them very little or not at all.
Of course, these assessments are not the last word on the mater
of telecollaboration. Promoters of instructional technology such
as telecollaboration have reverted to a claim that the computer
is just another learning tool. But this response ignores the ecological
impact of telecollaboration.
There is a tendency for computers to promote and support certain
kinds of learning experiences and devalue others. In other words,
telecollaboration can in fact be counterproductive.
Several years ago there was a television panel discussion that
focused on some ideas for computer telecollaboration in the classroom.
Early in the program, a video showed how a fourth-grade class in
rural Iowa used computers to produce hypertext book reports on Charlotte's
Web, E.B. White's classic children's novel.
The teacher claimed that students were so enthusiastic about the
project that they chose to go to the computer lab rather than outside
for recess. While she seemed impressed by this dedication, it underscores
the first troubling influence of computers. But students will best
learn the lessons implicit in the novel Charlotte's Web with the
need to negotiate relationships, the importance of all members of
a community, even the rats. They need to learn about how to analyze
the narrative and not just make cool graphics of spiders and write
short book reports. One of the most important parts of literary
analysis is discussion—which can not take place whrn the children
are sitting, isolated, at their own computers.
Do not get me wrong, structured learning certainly has its place,
even telecollaboration. But if it takes up too much space and forces
out direct, unmediated engagement with the world, it undercuts your
students education. Children learn the fragility of flowers by touching
their petals. They learn to cooperate by organizing their own games.
The involvement with telecollaboration can not simulate full-bodied,
and often deeply heartfelt experiences that educate not just the
intellect but also the soul of the child.
When children are free to practice on their own, they can test
their inner perceptions against the world around them, develop the
qualities of care, self-discipline, courage, compassion, generosity,
and tolerance — and gradually figure out how to be part of
both social and biological communities.
One of my most unforgettable moments from elementary school had
nothing to do with telecollaboration. It is of seeing a huge black-and-yellow
garden spider crawl off of Becky Jones backpack after a field trip
of picking wildflowers, in an educational unit on the biology of
a plant. Seeing the spider set the whole class in motion with excited
conversation and bemused our teacher. Somehow, that spider spoke
to we wide-eyed third graders. We could not help but speak back.
Nature has a way of teaching beyond what any telecollaboration,
or even textbook, for that matter, can teach.
The work of students using telecollaboration, watching the video
or working on the computer does not reflect it, the kind of experience
I mentioned above will play a major role in understanding and analyzing
E.B. White's story.
Charlotte's Web lures your students attention to something that
increasingly rare in schools, because of too much telecollaboration.
And that is the wonder of the typical processes of nature, the understanding
of which grows mostly through the students having direct contact
with the real world.
The philosopher Hannah Arendt along with other observers have noted:
we can only learn who we are as human beings by encountering the
things that we are not. Replacing this excitement with telecollaboration,
with virtual connections instead of first-hand engagement is like
mistaking a map of a certain land for the land itself.
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