The SITE 2008 conference hosted speakers from 65 countries and a large number of parallel sessions. The use of social media in teaching – wikis in particular – was the thematic offering this year. The wiki presentations can be summarized as follows: Wikis have come to stay in teaching. The idea behind such activity is active cooperative effort with regard to some question of content, and wikis truly have the possibility of deepening learning. Monitoring-based research also indicated problems, however: participation is uneven, motivation tends to decline in long projects, and specialists in particular showed themselves to be cautious about editing their colleagues’ texts.
Research results have also obtained confirmation on what is a familiar matter in practice – teachers gain benefit from the same social media-based tools in teaching that they also utilize during their leisure time. Currently 19 out of every 20 American youth actively use social media, so it is certain that in the future social media tools are set to be used extensively both in teaching and in working life generally.
One aspect outside the field of social media that led to a lot of discussion was the presentation by Ronald McBride(Northwestern State University of Louisiana), according to which the research data does not support the rather general assumption that student results or satisfaction improve when classroom teaching is joined to online instruction. The speaker demonstrated in detail that it is possible to realize all the same operations online that are used in classroom teaching. Contradicting the assumption referred to, the quality of web services rises significantly when classroom teaching is completely abandoned. It is universities and schools that need teachers, he says – not students.
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| One of the most interesting speakers at the SITE 2008 conference was Professor Punya Mishra (Michigan State University), who emphasized the creative combination of content, pedagogics and technology. Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) is King – that’s all right mama! | |||