Post #8B

Response to Pedagogical Agent Articles

While I was surprised to read some of the very explicit transcripts between the female pedagogical agent and the students, I was also reminded of how I saw students act in a similar situation. When volunteering at a middle school, I was part of a program where students went online to a secure chat room, much like we use for this class, to discuss literature with pre-service English teachers. Students were told to discuss literature, but not much else was said in terms of direction for this assignment. I remember being online and a part of some conversations between the students and teachers. While the most explicit or inappropriate thing I recall any student saying was “shut up,” I do remember being offended that a student even went that far. The kids knew that the pre-service teachers could contact their original teacher, and they also knew that the transcripts were recorded and sent to their teacher. Regardless, the kids still managed to stay off-topic for most of the required time.

At the time, I concluded this was so because the students were not given enough on-topic material to discuss in the first place and that the rules for social norms online had not been clearly established. I continue to believe that both of these were reasons for their poor performance online, but I have some new information to ponder too. I think that the informal language used to chat online such as abbreviations for words and lack of punctuation and capitalization helps to foster the kind of environment where inappropriate, not school related conversations will occur. Conversations outside of school between peers using online chat functions occur all the time. Taking a space that has for most kids been parent/adult-free and used exclusively for social networking and telling kids to use that space in the classroom without direction for how to do so seems irresponsible. Why would we think that kids will act any differently in that space simply because we are placing that space in a school? My point is this: Kids must be taught and held accountable for appropriate behavior in the online space just as they would be in a face-to-face interaction. This seems paramount when kids are using the technology in school for the first time. Otherwise, kids will use this space, just as they might outside of the classroom, to explore boundaries and to establish identity. Therefore, it is the role of the teacher to establish ground rules to ensure that kids know they are held accountable. By extension, this will hopefully help kids understand the importance of responsibly navigating rules and norms of other spaces online that they might visit on their own time and as adults.