My presentation focuses on how distances between instructors and students are abridged in the English networked classroom and how this shift to networked reading and writing necessitates a change in teaching practice.

First, I discuss the expectations about student learning that instructors often bring to their community college classrooms. With this profile as ground, I discuss the figure of the community college networked classroom and the ways it alters both student learning patterns and my own teaching practice. Lastly, I emphasize the importance of the shift in power that accompanies this shift in focus. The focus is no longer primarily on my performance as the teacher; it is on the writing and reading that each student is doing every day in a community of other writers. As a result, I no longer am the dominant voice. Students learn to hear their own, and each others’, voices more clearly, and we are an interpretative community rather than an instructor and a group of students waiting to be graded. My experience in the Daedalus classsroom has shown me that students can and will become more independent as learners than I ever suspected. For the first time, many of our "disadvantaged" students are validated as active participants in an intellectual community. In order for this to happen, however, the teacher who would integrate internet-oriented technologies, must be ready to cede the position of being the primary authority in the class and must generate a new pedagogy.

Presenter: Suellyn Winkle

Category: Classroom practice

Target Audience: Intermediate