Professor JoAnn Phillion
During the fall of 2000, and again in the spring of
2001, Professor Phillion (shown below with her class) piloted the
use of technology-assisted field observations with volunteers from
her section of EDCI 205, Exploring Teaching as a Career. Using Polycom
two-way Internet-based video conferencing technology, students meeting
in a room in the Liberal Arts and Education Building were able to
observe and interact with diverse elementary students in a classroom
at Harrison Elementary School in East Chicago, a P3T3 project partner
school district.
Professor Phillion reported encouraging results from
her experiments with the technology. Except for some difficulties,
such as trouble clearly hearing students on occasion, the technology
worked fairly well. Professor Phillion found it enlightening to observe
along with her students, because she found that she and the students
often focused on different things. Since everyone could observe the
same classroom events, she found she could better assess students'
observations and foster lively in-class discussions about the classroom.
Of course, a key advantage of this approach is that students can observe
an urban classroom setting, with a diverse student population, without
having to travel long distances to do so.
See
related Purdue News story
See
Chronicle of Higher Education story
See
national PT3 website story
See PT3 Now!
video from WHRO-TV in Norfolk, Virginia
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