So, what are my final thoughts about this experience? For one, it was definitely a detriment and a source of frustration throughout the semester that I was tied to working with one individual at one location. This meant that if either of us had a schedule conflict, I ended up missing out on service-learning time. I was pretty busy this semester, so I don’t know that I could’ve worked something else in, but I should’ve tried. I may be able to work on the Digital Divide Wikipedia article before the semester ends, so that may help diversify my experience.
This experience also reinforced my conviction that my technology teaching skills (and my teaching skills more generally) need a lot of work. Teaching technology as someone who’s relatively tech-savvy to someone who is less so is very tough. For one thing, it’s a pedagogy requiring a lot of experimentation and failure to learn how to do things, which is different from how we learn to do a lot of other things. This was a big problem with Sharon, who tends to be very task-oriented and isn’t accustomed to making the deviations where learning usually happens.
I also discovered that learning and teaching tech tends to be very idiosyncratic. I was surprised that Sharon had difficulty with some things (such as wikis) but was relatively adept at others (such as PowerPoint). Getting proficient with technology requires a lot of trial-and-error and failure, admittedly more than a lot of people are comfortable with. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that computers frustrate the hell out of me at times, but when that does happen, it’s usually because of hardware or software installation/configuration issues, not conceptual issues. But as far as getting around the Web and using a computer to its fullest potential, everyone learns differently. Therefore, teaching tech to newer users like we teach reading or algebra is probably not the best approach to take.
December 7, 2007 at 10:52 pm
I really enjoyed this post, Chris. I agree that service-learning gets really interesting when it intersects with pedagogy. I’m grateful that I could watch two professionals in action, literally. Both of them were high school teachers before returning to graduate school and I was able to soak up some techniques. Like repeat, repeat, repeat, but say it differently each time. They even talked about “constructivism” and using easy-to-understand metaphors to help explain foreign concepts. And I think it would be really difficult to work with the same person over a period of time. My classes have been so incredibly diverse and some had really low thresholds for any kind of frustration. That would’ve been soul crushing to work with over the course of the semester