What about e-class ?
So, I’m here in communication class in a communication school. But what is changing for me as a student being taught by a teacher ? What is changing and what is not in this new dispositive of education ?
In order to understand thes changements, let’s check this picture :
It’s quite rudimental, and focused on how the communication and the energy goes in a tradtional classroom. The teacher is ruling his class by being able to see everyone, while others student can’t see the whole classroom. This is what we call an panoptical dispositive. The hierarchy is based on who can see and who’s is seen.
Notice how limited the interactions are. There is one offical interaction, which is the teacher talking to his students, and teacher them a lesson. In most of the situation, the interaction between students is prohibited, in order to maintain the teacher in his symbolical position. If you want to talk, you’ll need a permission from the teacher.
Notice also that this symbolical position is guaranteed both by the fact that the teacher is the only source of knowledge in the class, and by the material disposition of the classroom.Therefore, his authority is based on knowledge and point of view (literally speaking).
Now, let’s take a quick look at an e-class room
First of all, there’s much more arrows, wich means much more communication.
And this communication is not only hierarchical, but ther’s several types of communication throughout the classroom.
The first to appear is the « classical » communication between the teacher and the students. Remember what I told you : in a classical classroom, the teacher is so because he’s got a visual contact with every single student (panoptism), and he’s the only source of knowledge. Well, in an e-class room, he’s not the only source of knowledge anymore. The Web is, among with personnal experiences. So, in order to maintain his position in the communication process, he has to have a visual contact with the whole class, most commonly through a big screen. Ok, he looks like Big Brother, but (trust my own experience !), as soon as this visual contact disappears, the classroom gets much more chaotic.
The second type of interaction is, in fact, double. Students can communicate between them, by talking, but they can also communicate between them on a specific Network, like MSN Live or Skype. This double communication is not prohibited like in a traditionnal classroom, but it’s ecommended, as the teacher isn’t actually making the class. It’s us, students, who have to go and search the knowledge available on the web.
Therefore, we see that the role of the teacher is changing. He’s more of a guide, showing us the way, but not actually telling us what is to know and what is not. The teacher has no knowledge anymore, and that’s a big difference.
And the way that the teacher can communicate with his students is also different. I said that a screen is necessary, but the teacher can call each student one-by-one, and as the student’s mind is focused on the screen, the teacher is interfering directly where the student is focused. Whereas in a traditonnal classroom, the teacher’s face can get out of your sheet !
Well, e-class room is great, but there is several problems that I would like to raise.
First of all, the tehnical aspect. It is important to have effective devices, and I think a dedicated network would be great. Because it’s the only link between every members of the class, teacher included. Just like the wheels of your car, it has to be stable and effective.
Then a more social aspect. Internet is vast, and one can easily be distracted. That’s no good for a class, so I think e-class room is also aout trust and responsability. Trust from the teacher, responsability from the students. that’s why it seems to me that an e-class room on this model is quite difficult to apply in lower grades, like primary school or even high school. Unless you have a specific software and a restricted acess to the Internet, there’s too many ways to lose time and energy on the Web.
