The TeleLearning Professional Development School (TeleLearning-PDS) offers support for:

Collaborative inquiries in networked classrooms

Third-year student teachers are encouraged to

• form a community of learners of their own as student teachers
  
  • learning to make sense of the use of information and communication technologies (ICT)
    
  • learning to use basic technology : html editor, VGroups (Virtual-U), concept map software (Inspiration), knowledge building tool (Knowledge Forum)
    
  • learning to teach collaboratively with their cooperative teacher in a network-enabled classroom
    
    
• envision the network-enabled classroom as a community of learners, a socio-technical design based on agency, reflection, collaboration, and culture (Brown, 1997)
  
  • learning to become a reflective practitioner
    
  • learning to identify a driving question and pursue a collaborative inquiry that is related to learning-to-teach in a network-enabled classroom
    
  • produce results as a consequential task (e.g., a website with sound writing and videoclips, etc.).

 

Fourth-year student teachers are encouraged to

• form a knowledge building community
  
  • one that focuses on a shared learning goal, or a driving question
    
  • one that connects with other knowledge building communities
    
  • one that builds knowledge
    
    
• contribute to the learning and knowledge building community
  
  • evidence-based notes
    
  • portfolio, case study

 

Teacher educators engage in presenting and anlyzing case studies of new social practices. These cases illustrate how "today's computer communication networks enable communities of active participants", Harasim, 1993).

 

Hence, not only does technology becomes a "social space, tailored to the needs of a specific group of student teachers and responsive to their common interests, needs, and goals ", but an object of inquiry in and of itself for the demonstration of new social spaces for human interaction (communication and collaboration).