Teacher Training with Virtual Classroom

Life through the passenger window, Gull Lake, CA on Memorial Day 2008

After reading “Virtual Classroom at the University of Central Florida puts Teachers to the Test” and watching the short video clip of the training, I am amazed at how useful this tool could be in training not only elementary school teachers but college teachers as well. The program’s characters are each crafted to take on a particular personality, which in my opinion, shared drastic similarities to the students that a college teacher can encounter in their classroom. While college professors may not be faced with a student as disruptive as “Marcus”, they will encounter students with distinct personalities that may not want to participate in the class or who may be disruptive in the classroom in a more subtle way. For example, in my first college class I encountered students who texted in class and had a student to came late to class and was very disruptive to the other students. How as teachers do we handle these situations? Could we be trained to handle these situations more professionally? Perhaps if we had practice handling these situations and others before we actually stepped into a classroom we would have a stronger hold on our classroom. Another aspect of the program that I found useful was the fact that they can incorporate a live actor with sensors as one of the students in the classroom, making each training session different and unique to how the teacher in training responds. I am interesting in seeing if this spreads to other universities. I have a feeling that this type of training is very costly, which would prevent some colleges from obtaining such a tool.