PED582

Yahoo Instant Messaging (IM) is a tool that we’ve learnt this week as a teaching aid. It is actually a tool that is useful in conducting counseling session whereby face-to-face interaction with the student can be avoided to allow him to be more at ease and in a way more conducive for sharing of innermost thoughts. This is also especially useful for students, who are not so vocal in class, to ask question online. At the same time, IM provides teacher with the ability to cater to many students at a time as well as a mean to archive individual conversation with the students which can be useful for future referencing.

With regards to the six elements of Constructivist Learning Approaches, IM provides an excellent Just-In-Time platform for students to enhance the Questioning aspect during an allocated IM session and concurrently allows the teacher to find out how much they have learnt (Exhibit) as well as to set up the bridge by extending the problems raised by the students, developing their analytical thinking skill. At the end of the day, students can reflect what they have learnt and discovered after giving it some thought and return to the next IM session to relate to the teacher.

Since Yahoo IM can be downloaded freely from the web, it is considered a convenient online discussion tool. However, it can pose some problems. Does the teacher want the session to be held in school? Then, does the school allow downloading of the IM? Again, will the students be hooked onto the attractive and fanciful IM such that they dabble on it the whole day and miss their homework? And, most importantly, parents might not want their children to be addicted to IM, which undeniably presents certain elements of danger especially if the children were to talk to other strangers and meet them up without the parents knowing.

Hence, IM is essentially a double edged sword. It can facilitate teaching and learning but on the other hand, if it is misused, the consequences can be detrimental.