Let's Teach!
Innovative Internet Teaching/Learning Techniques

By the time you read this, it will be the year 2000 (or nearly so if we get this edition of My Mac posted early). How has the Internet affected teaching methods? Has it allowed new, better methods of teaching, or has it just given teachers a different means of presenting the same old dry text?

How do you teach a visual subject such as photography in a text-based Internet chat room? How do you teach an interactive subject with previously prepared static text? How do you teach ANYTHING over the Internet armed with a Macintosh and a web browser and do it effectively?

These are just a few of the stumpers that I was confronted with a little over a year ago when I had the opportunity to start a weekly one-hour Internet-based interactive Photography Workshop/Class. While I eventually developed a very effective method to overcome these challenges, it was not easy!

I roamed the Internet looking for innovative teaching techniques, inside and outside photography. While I found some pretty impressive teaching techniques, I found nothing that I thought fit in well with teaching photography on the Internet. I tried the methods I had been using one-on-one for years--explain all the theory and implementation of a photographic technique or skill, offer some tips to make the technique work better, then show a photographic example or two.

But it didn't work for the Internet, because by the time I got around to the example photographs, two weeks had passed and half of the original attendees were off doing other things and the new attendees had no idea what had been discussed days or weeks before.

After getting help and suggestions from friends, I finally found a three step prescription that worked:
1) Limit each week's discussion to parts of a topic that can be covered in about 30 minutes,
2) Discuss a part of a technique, changing or augmenting the previously prepared text-based on live interaction with the students, and
3) Post the URL(s) of example photograph(s) that illustrate the technique and discuss the photos as all attendees view the photo(s).

This gave me the visual content needed to teach photography in a text-based chat room, and the chat room itself allowed for the immediate interactivity needed to ensure that the attendees really did "see" the skill I was trying to teach.

I have now been conducting the free weekly photography workshops for about a year, and they seem to be very effective both in helping people learn photography basics and advanced techniques. But notice that steps 2 and 3 require a real live teacher be present to give the technique full effectiveness.

Come to a Snapshots To Photographs session on Thursdays at 9 PM Eastern, 6 PM Pacific at http://wwbchat.com and see for yourself.

Having an expert present as the student is learning seems to be the missing ingredient in most Internet-based training. Based upon my experiences over the past year, I have come to the conclusion that the main contribution of the Internet to learning is in allowing distance between the teacher and the student, NOT in elimination of the teacher. However, for less visual or technical subjects a rapid feedback method such as a regularly staffed chat room or promptly answered email seems to be favored by educational institutions and commercial training companies.

Extensive searching of the Internet resulted in dozens of sites that TELL about teaching using the Internet, but most of the teaching examples I found consisted mainly of broken links and "Under construction" notices.

Now, on to just a few examples of teaching techniques and resources that I've found on the Internet:

Nicenet's Internet Classroom Assistant at http://www.nicenet.org gives teachers a free framework to construct and administer web-based learning environments for classrooms, distance learning programs and collaborative academic projects. It is basically an unlimited set of empty classrooms that you can use. It "brings powerful World Wide Web-based conferencing, personal messaging, document sharing, scheduling, and link/resource sharing to a variety of learning environments." If you want to set up your own Internet classroom, check out their Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page at http://www.nicenet.org/ica/ica_faq.cfm. This site looks very useful to me, and I may use it to conduct fee-based photography workshops or one-on-one lessons.

The Teacher Only Resource: Technology and Teacher Education at http://www.mcrel.org/resources/technology/prodev.asp provides information and links to sites designed to help educators use technology and integrate it into the curriculum. It requires a browser plugin from http://egg.real.com/vivo_player/vivodl.html

This site contains links to websites that "provide some of the best online resources available to help educators, administrators, and parents answer common questions and solve problems related to the implementation and use of technology in education." I explored several of the referenced sites. While the technology was there, I think the effectiveness is lacking, at least in the sampling I viewed.

Explore Science at http://www.explorescience.com is filled with interactive Shockwave animations that illustrate scientific concepts in subject areas like sound, electricity, mechanics, and astronomy. While the animations are well-done, the explanations leave a lot to be desired. An example of gee-whiz technology that doesn't really improve on classroom teaching.

Next month we will see more of the best knowledge and information sites on the Internet.

And now, KnowledgeSpider's Knowledge/Information Resource recommendation of the month:

Teaching on the Internet: Investigate a range of Teaching techniques on the Internet.

In each column I will grab knowledge or information resources from the web and share them with you. If you have a learning or knowledge resource or a teaching technique that has proven particularly useful to you, share it with all of us by tossing it into my web!

David E. Price
david@mymac.com