Distance learning

I have never been in a true distance-learning situation, mostly through my own choosing. I enjoy direct social interaction.  I like being able to chat directly with my students, to hear the intonation and emphasis in their statements and questions.  I like hearing their laughter and their perplexed or confused tones as they verbalize their thinking and problem-solving efforts.  It's not that I believe that this direct contact is inherently better, but I do believe that it is valuable.  Learning separated from a direct social construction worries me as I feel that much of our personalities can be lost through on-line postings. 

My email or Twitter interactions (and even blog posts for that matter) rely on the groundwork that I have already formed through direct personal interaction with my students and colleagues.  They, more often than not, know my tones and moods and can understand my written (typed) words better due to the background relationship that we already have. 

I guess that all this shows that I value the learning community in which all members can contribute to the learning of others and learning does not need to be strictly teacher-centered delivery of material.  The teacher is responsible for creating a learning situation and helping to make sure that fair and equal opportunities for learning are available to each individual student.  I see this as problematic for many of my high school students since technology and computer access, including web connectivity, are not equal throughout the variety of socio-economic conditions of my students and their families. 

Peterson seems to acknowledge the changing roles and modes of education due to technology, but I feel that she does not wish to construct a model of one model being the ideal for all students and that teachers must not "abdicate their responsibility to actively participate in the shaping of new roles for instructors" (377).   This is a valuable statement as we will continue to be reactive rather than proactive in the manner in which we teach our students as well as the technology we choose to incorporated into our learning situations.  This seems to be the case for my school district as decisions are made on the district-wide administrative level rather.  Thus, technologies are adopted and instituted without our input and we are forced to incorporate those technologies or be faced with wasting tax-payer resources. 

So, if I do not best utilize network, email, web, or inter-active whiteboard technologies, I am judged to be failing to fully utilize school funding, when the root failure may lie in the adoption process. 

Please don't be confused as to where the blame should lie; teachers are as much at fault as the administrators who made the purchasing decision.