Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog :: Teacher Education and Next Gen Collaboration

I enjoyed reading this article, Connecting informal and formal learning: Experiences in the age of participatory media, by Bull, et al. (2008) from CITE -- a journal that focuses on technology and teacher education.

While it is true, schools and teachers are limited by a number of factors associated with an academic enterprise, the gist of the authors' argument can be boiled down to this key sentence:

Gen-Y teacher education students who are developing pedagogical and content knowledge can serve as collaborators in determining methods for adapting emergent social media and communications technologies to classroom use.

The authors of this editorial suggest that in working with teacher education students who are more familiar with social media, today's teacher educators can become better equipped to meet the demands of a media-rich participatory culture.They conclude with the following statement:

The informal learning that occurs in the context of participatory media offers significant opportunities for increased student engagement in formal learning settings. The experience with communication technologies that teenagers today possess must be tapped by educators and connected to pedagogy and content, however, in order to address learning objectives in schools. Teacher education faculty members are experienced in this arena. We are currently at a moment in time in which the current and next generation of educators each can make a genuine contribution by working together." (Bull, et al, 2008).

I found this paragraph to be both awkwardly worded and perhaps easily taken out of context. I agree with the way the authors start by noting that students' background knowledge of social media is a great resource to tap to build new knowledge and understanding. My problem comes with the statement:

Teacher education faculty members are experienced in this arena.

I would like to see the research to back this up. Are the authors referring to educational technology professors when they say "teacher education faculty members?" Based on my experience working in a college of education and with teacher education professionals from other institutes, corporations, colleges and universities, the number of teacher education faculty members experienced in collaborating with their students using technology is perhaps a tenth of a percent of the number of teacher educators practicing today. That is to say, use and affordances of social media are clearly documented in the literature and on the Web, but the question remains: are teacher educators and pre-service teachers facile with this knowledge and content?

More than simply using Internet and communication technologies in the classroom because (a) they are a part of education standards and (b) because the kids are using them, it is more critical for educators to understand not only what should be taught, why is it important, and how should this knowledge be organized, but also

• How does learning connect to what goes on outside the classroom?
• What kinds of things and people might learners want to be in contact with in order to learn?
• And how can students, teachers, parents see if learning is effective?

I guess from my position as a teacher educator I am concerned about some of the ways I still see and hear how technology is still considered a disruption in the negative, resource-soaked sense, rather than as a disruption that allows us to re-think what we are doing as educators. Not that the Bull, et al. (2008) article paints integrating technology in a negative sense; I guess it saddens me that the Bull article still needs to be written in the first place, reminding many of us that the train (to use an historical and paradoxically-charged metaphor) has left the station and that you still have an opportunity to hop on board. I suppose this trend in teacher education and technology integration articles will continue for some generations. And I suppose there will always be people like me asking similar questions hoping that one day we'll all get a little closer to where need to be.

References:

Article:
Bull, G., Thompson, A., Searson, M., Garofalo, J., Park, J., Young, C., & Lee, J (2008). Connecting informal and formal learning: Experiences in the age of participatory media. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 8(2). Retrieved 23 September 2008 from http://www.citejournal.org/vol8/iss2/editorial/article1.cfm

Photos:
top- via http://designyoutrust.com
bottom- http://www.artofmarkbryan.com