LEARNING FROM THE EDUCATORS: CREATING A GLOBAL CURRICULUM IN A VIRTUAL SPACE

A majority of the studies described in the educational technology literature report occasions that focus on the potential use of the tools as an extension of the classroom, rather than an exploration of how these connective, multimedia technologies encounter actual classrooms and curricula in the hands of teachers. This presentation describes what was discovered and determined to be of value for future inquiry and professional development practices during the course of a fifteen month qualitative study of the practical worlds of two teachers who were given sustained access to technically-mediated tools, reliable technical support throughout the study, and the freedom to control their decisions about the pedagogies they were constructing.

Between April, 2007 and March, 2008 two teachers, one in northeastern Ohio, the other in Israel, began an uncertain collaboration in the construction of a virtual, technically-mediated interactional space for the conduct of a social studies curriculum for each of their two sixth grade classes. I was centrally involved in establishing the possibility for their collaboration, and then in documenting and analyzing an emergent path, whereby they came to ‘tame’ the technology, discover its possibilities and limits, trim their curriculum to those realities, and discover still others they had not anticipated.

Although teachers are frequently admonished by educational technologists to move beyond a limited engagement with the technologies to a more robust utilization within their classrooms, the findings in this study suggest that teachers, given sufficient time and opportunities to learn these tools coupled with reliable and sustained technical and administrative support, are receptive to the adoption of the technologies and innovative in developing teaching and learning opportunities for their students as they negotiate the integration of the technically-mediated environments within the practical exigencies of their local classrooms.