Electronic communication and social interaction

1. Electronic communication and social interaction • Having students immersing themselves in electronic communication may be seen by some as socially isolating. It can be established however, that with the appropriate instruction and leadership by teachers, students can use electronic communications to develop social skills.

2. Icebreakers • Fisher and Tucker (2004) have developed a series of games using electronic communications they call “icebreakers” to cement relationships between students that have no physical contact with each other. An example of an icebreaker game using a ‘chat room’ is to have all students, without instruction from the teacher, number themselves, by each picking a number until all students have a number in numerical order.

3. Scaffolding relationships • By using these games teachers can have students interacting and working as a cohesive group, even though they may never meet in person. “This ability to have in-depth dialogue and scaffold ideas is how effective learning occurs in any classroom” (Fisher and Tucker, 2004, p 10).

4. Cohesive working groups • Socialisation using electronic communication has implications that go far beyond the student years and into the working life. A surgeon using electronic communication to perform surgery with a team of doctors in a remote hospital is one such example of working in a cohesive group where one or more members of the group is not present