Bridging Gaps - and now, the published article

Over the past two week we've devoted a couple of posts to the webinar

How can the internet be used to bridge gaps between populations?

We've linked to a YouTube video about the course, and we've also posted a review of the webinar itself. And now, with the publication of the latest issue (Vol 10, No. 2) of

The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning

a special edition devoted to education in the Middle East, we can also link to an article by the presenters at the webinar, Elaine Hoter, Miri Shonfeld and Aasma Ganayim. Their article is titled:

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the Service of Multiculturalism

It presents the online inter-group contact hypothesis (OICH) model that served as the basis for their online course, describes the aims of the Center for Multiculturalism and Technology, and evaluates the course itself. Extensive references are also included, making this an important contribution to an examination of ICT and Multiculturalism.

We might add that this issue of the journal contains numerous articles that should be of interest to readers of this blog.

Bridging Gaps - A Review of the Online Session

The Bridging Gaps online session offered numerous insights for anyone concerned with using the internet to further multi-cultural understanding.

Most of the session was conducted by Elaine Hoter who gave an overview of the courses conducted by the Center for Technology and Multi-Culturalism. Dr. Hoter offered three different definitions of peace:

• Negative Peace - the absense of violence


• Positive Peace - cooperation, harmony, commerce, mutuality
  
• Structural Peace - equality, independence, sovereignty

She showed us that the Arab and Jewish populations of Israel each adhere to different definitions, hold different narratives about what peace entails:

Hoter emphasized that student teachers in Israel hardly ever meet their counterparts from other populations, and that the purpose of the multi-cultural course the Center runs isn't to solve problems, but is instead considerably more modest - to facilitate meetings that take place on an equal basis.

Hoter, Ganayem and Shonfeld have developed a model for interaction based on the Contact Hypothesis. Their model makes use of the internet as a buffer that permits people to establish contact before they actually meet face to face:

The presenters emphasized that even in this somewhat sheltered situation it was preferable to avoid some topics that might on first glance seem innocuous but carried numerous political overtones. They also stressed, however, that the students in the course noted that the interaction between the teachers in the course served as a model of harmony for the students themselves.

Overcoming stereotypes is, of course, never easy, but the Bridging Gaps session (a recording is available here) showed that the internet, and a great deal of goodwill, can go a long way toward doing so.

Bridging Gaps with Technology

In a couple of days (Wednesday, April 22, at 20:00 to be exact) we'll be holding a webinar devoted to the question:

How can the internet be used to bridge gaps between populations?

Israel is a society where question of multi-culturalism are critical, but that's no doubt true of many other countries, so we're hopeful that others will be able to learn from our experience - and to contribute from their own.

In that webinar the three leaders of the Center for Technology and Multi-Culturalism, Dr. Miri Shonfeld, Dr. Elain Hotter and Aasma Ganayim will discuss (in English) their experience with courses and seminars that the center facilitates.

From the Center's web site:

Teacher education colleges train the future teacher population for technology-based environments, for change and for a pluralistic society emphasizing the cultural uniqueness of each community. Inter-cultural dialogue is essential for knowledge and mutual respect as well as for a better enlightened human future.

For a glimpse into the work of the Center, we'll offer here a short video:

More on "Who, When and How?"

A week ago we wrote here about the webinar devoted to Preparing future teachers for internet-aided learning. Since then a number of materials have been edited and we can now make them available for further study.

• The Interwise recording of the session is accessible for anyone wishing to listen. It's an hour and a half long, in Hebrew. (In order to listen, it's necessary to install Interwise.)


• The PowerPoint presentation that accompanied the session (also in Hebrew) is also accessible.

In the session, Olzhan Goldstein reported on her research. The review of the literature that's part of her research (again, in Hebrew, as a Word document) is available. In addition, the bibliography, primarily in English this time, can be downloaded separately.

We hope these resources can enrich the understanding both of those who participated in the session, as well as those who have found this page only afterwards.

Who, When and How?

This past week, on March 25, the OLE unit conducted a webinar on the topic of:

Preparing future teachers for internet-aided
learning – Who, When, and How?

In this session (in Hebrew) three teacher educators at three different teacher colleges in Israel gave short presentations on their experience in teaching with ICT.

Each of the three described how she has worked not only with student teachers, but with other faculty members at her college to help their student teachers integrate ICT into their work, and to feel both that they are capable of using these technologies and that they have an important role to play in teaching.

Nitsa Waldman opened her part of the session with some important background information. Since 2004 teachers colleges have been required to teach the basics of computer use as well as the ways ICT can be integrated into the teaching of specific disciplines. What’s more, future teachers are expected to be exposed to at least 120 hours of computer use, including numerous hours in “distance learning” courses.

This background information gave perspective on the major question that the webinar attempted to deal with: Who is going to help the future teacher acquire the knowledge necessary to use ICT in the classroom in a worthwhile and educational why?

Waldman noted the various possibilities:

• The pedagogic coach
• The “computer” teacher
• The teachers in each discipline
• The school teacher by whom the student teacher is acquiring experience
• Or perhaps all of these together

Waldman presented a chart representing the Koheler/Mishra Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge model (http://www.tpck.org):

She demonstrated a model for integrating the various forces involved in educating teachers in order to achieve the desired goal - a new teacher who is capable of using ICT in his or her teaching.

Waldman emphasized that previous research has shown that neither pre-service teachers, nor faculty, perceived themselves as prepared to teach with computers. In her part of the webinar, Nicole Eitan reported on her experience at Achva College. In the model that Eitan presented, the student teacher and the pedagogic coach represented two corners of a triangle, while the specialist in ICT completed the third corner.

Olzhan Goldstein reviewed research she conducted. She studied a course offered to second year students in Special Education. In this course the students learned to use both existing online resources, and to prepare digital resources by themselves, and also how to use these within the context of their work with pupils. Goldstein examined whether the students’ attitudes toward digital resources changed as a result of the course. To put things perhaps much too simply, she found that although at the beginning of their studies the student teachers had negative attitudes toward ICT, later on, particularly because their pupils were in favor of these tools, their attitudes changed.

The participants in this session weren’t passive. Many of them were also experienced ICT teachers, and in the discussion after the presentations a number of these participants reported on their own experience. In this sense, though the focus was on the presentations of the three “invited” speakers, the session definitely took on a tenor of a seminar in which all participants had something to contribute, and everyone felt they had learned something.

A blog's continuing silence

If there are any followers to this blog, its extended silence (two full months) should be a sign that it hasn’t yet succeeded in finding its voice. The Online Learning Environments unit of the Mofet Institute has been very active during these past two months. It has conducted numerous Webinars on a wide variety of topics, in addition to workshops designed to provide teacher educators with digital tools they can incorporate into their instruction. But the blog has been silent.

The blog was envisioned as a tool to bring information about various OLE-initiated activities to English speaking educators. We in Israel have learned a great deal from the English language research we read. In turn, we’re convinced that our experience here as well can be instrumental in furthering the topic of ICT integration in teacher education. Of course presenting this information to the world requires translation, but that’s perhaps the easy part.

When we report here – primarily on our Webinars – our objective isn’t only to advertise ourselves. We want to share our experience, to contribute our own experience to a growing, worldwide, repository. Until now, however, we haven’t found the proper balance between sharing our insights from various sessions (and in that way also hopefully initiating discussion) and simply reporting on past (and sometimes future) activities.

We’re still trying. And we’re hopeful that we’ll succeed, and that readers will find this forum useful.

Computer Mediated Discourse

Last week, on January 14, we hosted Professor Irit Kupferberg in a webinar that dealt with:

Self-construction in computer-mediated discourse: Theoretical and methodological perspectives

This was primarily in honor of chapter in a new book, edited by Thomas Hansson -

Handbook of Research on Digital Information Technologies: Innovations, Methods, and Ethical Issues

Professor Kupferberg has been involved in discourse analysis for many years, and the blossoming of internet based discussion groups has offered a wonderful opportunity to investigate written discourse detached from the signs and symbols that we're accustomed to in face-to-face interaction. She introduced us to her Four World Model that positions discourse in relation to the past, the present and the future, and to the interaction taking place.

We viewed numerous examples in which new teachers wrestled with various problems. Professor Kupferberg's model helped us glimpse into the world of these teachers, and how they saw their place in it.

For further study, Professor Kupferberg provided us with an extensive bibliography of materials related to self-construction in computer-mediated discourse.