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“Education providers across Australia are attempting to assimilate new teaching and learning technologies into existing teaching and learning structures.” However, during my experiences in the classroom it seems that the transition is not as smooth as hoped. The article creates dual concepts of the online classroom as a “self-actualising theme park” and as a “trial by multimedia”. Such concepts are used as contrastive metaphors to frame discussion of where and how the discourses of education and technology converge in the classroom.

“The essential impact of learner engagement with online learning environments is an emerging sense of learner control over the learning experience” (Baskin, 2001). As a teacher this represents substantive curriculum change, but not merely in terms of teaching and delivery. According to the article “resource-based learning and the shift from teacher-centred to learner-centred practice requires teachers to rethink their role”. In my opinion, to effectively incorporate the use of new information resources into the curriculum and culture of the classroom requires improved understanding of the learning theory.

Unlike the traditional classroom where everyone is learning the same thing, the article notes that participants in an online classroom contribute in a variety of interdependent ways. Thus, the online classroom becomes a way of organising learning, while providing the context in which learning can be demonstrated through active participation. Furthermore, as noted in the article “the value of the online environment lies in its capacity to enable teaching and learning”.

“As educators we are traditionally encouraged to focus on creating structures, systems and roles within our classrooms that achieve relatively fixed goals that enable our students to fit well into other school-based or systematic structures and processes”. As a future educator it seems this challenge would present itself in the form of strategies and techniques for classroom management.

However, despite all the positive changes the online classroom presents there are some to believe that online teaching leads to an increase in teacher workload and it can also lead to dissatisfaction with the quality of the teaching experience. Additionally, another potential problem facing the ICT in schools movement at the enterprise level is that staff, students and administrators in our schools experience technology differently.

In conclusion, the “experinces of new learning technologies are different, so too will be the range of outcomes”. Throughout the artcile two differing contrastive metaphors were apparent, but it has come to the fore throughout the article that we have both a trial by multimedia and the promise of a self-actualising theme park. it seems the only challenge left is how we choose to use it.

Reference: Australian Educational Computing – Journal for the Australian Council for computers in education. Vol. 18, No. 1. June 2003.

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