To begin today’s class we started with changing our environment from Macluarian to the video conferencing room in Clearihue building  where we were met with a 51st-century experience of a room that contained dozens of mics, sound-absorbent walls, and cameras that had the power to find the speaker in the room and zoom in on them talking. We attempted to have a video conference lesson however technology does fail and sadly we had to say goodbye to our virtual teacher. We had initial questions that made us think about pedagogical and modality approached practices. We were asked to compare face-to-face interactions with online ones to try to think about why both are important, beneficial and why people have different opinions on both methods.

Why is face to face experience important in class? 

-Face to face interaction allows students a mutual understanding with the teacher

-It makes the students feel more engaged and forces them to stay alert

Should an instructor’s preference override students’ accessibility?

-I think it depends on the teacher’s values if they believe that their pedagogy rules over students accessibility then they may think that it is up to the student to adapt their own lives to attend their class in the way the teacher prefers, and sometimes this isn’t physically or mentally possible for the student.

Should Modality bias exist?

-Yes

Comparing face-to-face classes and online programs you can relate them to the levels of exclusivity, segregative, integration and inclusivity aspects.  According to the diagram shown, face-to-face instruction can be seen as exclusive as it does not allow the chance for everyone to attend and learn. A segregated comparison would be having the same class in a face-to-face version and an online version. Inclusion comparing these two pedagogies is having either virtual conferences or using one of the robots that allow for artificial movement and being there. A major question that we need to think about as future educators are how can we destruct modality bias to seek what we want to achieve (inclusion and learning)

Another pretty cool thing we got to see and learn about today was a cool little robot man who has the ability to move around a class while projecting an image of the person controlling the robot from a different area. This robot was very neat as it allows for an inclusive classroom environment for students who may not be able to attend because of mental or physical reasons.

Also, It was very cute and we had the opportunity to scare lots of bystanders.