Online Learning In Middle School

In middle school I would log into my AOL instant messenger account and send phrases to SmarterChild, an artificial intelligence driven chatterbot, to translate into Spanish. I recall gleefully feeling like I had discovered a big secret, a way to use recreational instant messaging as a means to learn. Now, as technology becomes a more integral part of day-to-day life, the distinctions between what is purely fun and what is educational are becoming less clear. My own work in various educational capacities has shown me that it is possible for digital communication tools to effectively supplement learning. While this connection is clear, my experiences have also highlighted the complexity of the implementation and use of these resources, inspiring …show more content…
Mentoring students through the university application process while working for Prep-Zone, a Singapore-based education company, was one experience that brought out my interest in this area. Advising these students illuminated to me the limitations of traditional methods of tutoring. A number of our clients lived all over Asia and commuted to Singapore specifically to work with me and my coworkers because we were graduates of American universities and were trained to understand international school systems. The time and financial commitment required to commute to Singapore was significant, leading me to think about students who couldn’t easily access similar resources. While I initially thought these geographical restrictions could be surmounted using digital resources, I realized that these technologies bring their own unique barriers. We offered our distance students support through e-mail and Skype, but they near universally viewed online services as being impersonal and of lesser quality. One student from Qatar particularly stands out in my mind. We would go without communication for months at a time only to then spend days intensively brainstorming upon his return to Singapore. Why would he prefer this disjointed approach to learning when …show more content…
Nathan Holbert’s research on constructionism as a means of learning and his work with Snow Day Learning Lab is especially intriguing to me. Speaking with him about the distinction between learning goals in traditional curriculum development and constructionist environments further reinforced my interest in researching how variations in environment design impact efficacy. Additionally, designing a mobile application to address vocabulary comprehension has helped me see that some concepts are best understood through experience. As such, I find the Certification Project of the program extremely valuable as it would allow me to see concepts learned in the classroom applied to the real