Education Week 1/12/2011 Reflection

Reading "Simulations Helping Novices Hone Skills" was an eye-opening experience.  I had no idea that something like this was even being done.  It makes perfect sense, but I am still very skeptical about it.  The idea of a computer program that can simulate classroom conditions seems really farfetched to me.  Don't get me wrong, we should do anything we can to try to help prepare teachers and to try and make educating teachers more effective.  Computer simulations don't carry a whole lot of weight in my book when regarding students because you can honestly never know how all of those students are going to react.  Do the programs take into account everything that could be happening in an individual child's life and influence his/her actions in the simulation.  Can it even do that?  Can legitimately do that for five students in the one program and up to 18 in the other?  I highly doubt that.  I don't think it's possible.  Who can say how people are going to act?  The decisions we make are influenced by so many factors and I don't necessarily think that these simulations are good indicators of how students actually act.  It also is interesting for one of the programs to use actors, which I think lends some degree of realism to decision making skills.  But the flaw in that system is that they are connected by microphone and situated across campus at the university (Central Florida).  I think that this completely shatters any sense of realism that the simulation generates.  The article is correct that it will work out for student teachers who are trying to work on a limited skillset, but overall, I do not think that it is very indicative of a general classroom setting.  The other point I have with this article is the fact that they simply label the children in the simulations as "urban."  last I checked there were as many "urban" students who could act like and be like suburban or rural students.  This was one of the things that led me to believe that a program like this is not very effective.  The program is putting these kids and their profiles in a metaphorical box.  It almost seems like it is trying to stereotype kids and in doing so, they have severely limited the effectiveness of the program.  There is no doubt in my mind though that I would participate in these studies and try out the simulations for myself.  Some practice is better than no practice at all, even if some of that practice may not be entirely accurate or realistic.  That's probably what they are going for anyways.