Students enjoy being in a different space where authority is more de-centered than in the regular classroom and where they can move around at will. Both teacher and students found the experience of this particular class a bit chaotic, in part because their levels of knowledge about the technology varied, in part because of the multiple voices that emerged in the chat room. The computer lab is an alternative space in which students work collaboratively through a variety of media . Jennifer, the experienced teacher with an interest in instructional technology, constructs elegant, self-contained lessons in which students use a number of technologies and interact with the machines and one another in different ways throughout the class period. In one class that supplemented class readings about technology and education, Jennifer sends students to a scholarly web site to learn more about the Luddites, then has them, just for fun, take an on-line quiz to find out if they themselves are Luddites.
Small groups exchange questions, using the other group's questions to guide their discussion.
Based on the conclusions noted above, we plan to incorporate more CAI pedagogy into our practicum for new teachers, not only making available specific tools and lesson plans but also talking about the dynamics of the computer classroom and the relation between technology and writing pedagogy. We hope to use the taxonomy of teaching styles outlined above to help teachers define their roles as teachers of technology, so that they will be thoughtful about why and how they are using certain tools or lesson plans. Using video footage produced by this project, we plan to make a training tape for new teachers centered around the computer pedagogy of the three excellent teachers who participated with us in this study.