tech in the classroom

The article on this page describes what happens when students run amok in an experimental online classroom/chat room. The theory is that by involving technologies that are viewed in conjunction with "leisure" activities, effective learning is castrated. The authors of this study do have some pertinent points, but it does seem as though some gray area has been blacked out rather heavily.

Essentially, after the students logged on, the male students in the classroom started cracking homophobic jokes, jokes that the females largely ignored. According to the authors,

The early interventions by two male students set the framework and modality for the majority of their fellow online contributors. The usual power dynamics of a seminar setting, facilitated by the lecturer, were immediately transgressed and became impossible to re-establish.

How did it become impossible to re-establish boundaries? Another thing that is troubling about the article is that the reader is not given a sense of what boundaries were set into place before the students entered the online classroom. Did the teachers, perhaps with the notion that students obsessed with Facebook would immediately grasp the idea of an online classroom, give minimal instruction and expect the students to just "get it"?

Another section of the paper that is troubling reads as follows

The greatest gift that a
life of the mind provides is awareness that we are
responsible for our own failures, inadequacies and laziness. The greatest gift that chat rooms, blogs and Facebook provide is the construction of endless cycles of displacement where others – writers, teachers, politicians, boyfriends, girlfriends, (ex)best friends and mothers – can block the knowledge that we are accountable for the decisions we make in our lives. Homophobia is not a legitimate strategy or method for creating an empowered identity.

Where does the jump happen that allows the implicit comparison of homophobia with using online technologies? Instead of using the experience and searching out other possibilities with students using technology, the authors seem to have given up, tarring online discussion with the brush of homophobia and laziness forever. It did seem as though a chat room was too closely related to "leisure-based platforms" to be useful for ongoing class discussion, but it would be interesting to see the class layout reworked to see if a chat room can be a viable tool. What if the students didn't know each other and were given completely anonymous, gender neutral pseudonyms? Would that remove some of the gender based insults, or would that merely leave everyone open for flaming? What if the students were actually in seperate locations instead of packed together in a classroom where they could still talk to one another face to face?

What feels most important that the authors have failed to realize, or at least account for in their article, is that the online world has the same people that the real world does. The students that speak up in class are still going to speak up online. Unfortunately, if one is a slacker/homophobe in one's day to day interactions, those nasty traits do not disappear just because of a computer screen. The only difference is the words are in pixels instead of in sound waves. Such students need to learn to moderate their communication style in order to more fully deal with the learning issues at hand. And this needs to happen with some sort of online technology given how prolifically everyone uses it. Perhaps blogging instead of chatting, giving the students more time to process their thoughts while removing the ability to react as informally as in regular conversation?