Computer-Based Networks for Teacher Education

Jim Levin
Michael Waugh

College of Education

Presentation at Ed Tech Day, "Delivering Instruction over the Internet", October 14, 1994, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Teaching Teleapprenticeships

• Network interactions of education students with K-12 teachers and students
• Using advanced communication tools

Features of Teaching Teleapprenticeships

• Integration into existing courses and programs
• Development of communication software and education servers

Spanning the spectrum of courses taken by education students

• General education courses
• Teaching methods courses
• Student teaching
• Continuing education

Example Uses in Courses outside of Education

• Question answering (Kieffer, Bio100; Sandberg, Geol243)
• abstracting local intellectual resources (Dole, PlBio100)

Example Uses in Education Courses

• Electronic authoring, editing & publishing using network servers
• Use of laptop computers by student teachers to increase links between the university and the schools

Uses in Continuing Education

• Teachers as Educational Project generators and coordinators (C&I 300)

Development of advanced communication tools

• Message Assistant
• Augmented Eudora

Message Assistant

• Hypertextual organization of message sets
• Rule engine for operating on message sets

Use of network servers

• Learning Resource Server

Learning Resource Server

• Web server: URL <http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/>
• Gopher server: <gopher.ed.uiuc.edu>

"Delivering Instruction over the Internet"

• "Delivery of instruction"
• network learning environments

Half-life of information

• Decreasing
• Implications for education

Change in the "Information Economy"

• Previously: Information as a scarce resource
• Now: Information as a cheap resource (information overload)

Network Learning Environments

• Project-oriented learning
• Integration of learning and work

An example network project

• Noon Observation Project

Summary

• Instruction over the Internet can be quite different than conventional instruction
• There are many new instructional frameworks using the Internet