The affordances of web conferences in online pre-service mathematics education

Abstract

In their books "Teaching the digital generations: No more cookie cutters" (2008) and "Windows on the Future" (2001), Ted McCain and Ian Jukes discuss the change that is necessary in education to respond to technological change. Web conferences are emerging as an important pedagogical tool for pre-service teacher education. In this study pre-service mathematics teachers shared their views of the benefits and limitations that web conferences offer. The collection of data for analysis was from students experienced in web conferences and was obtained by, appropriately, a web conference where questions were presented on the web conference whiteboard and responses and discussion were given using the text, talk, polling and whiteboard tools embedded in the web conference software. This paper will provide a synthesis of the findings and explore the implications for online pre-service teacher education programs.