12 : Avatars As Teachers

In class we spoke about Avatars as being the best teachers. This a concept I simply cannot agree with. I don't feel that a virtual classroom will ever match a real classroom and a virtual professor just isn't the same thing. I don't feel one gets to actually know the professor if he or she is an avatar. It is interesting that an avatar can be programmed specifically to what the needs of the student, however I don't think this is necessarily a good thing though. Part of the learning process is experiencing different ways of learning and seeing different ways of presenting material. If one is simply presenting lectures in the say way over and over again one loses interest in that as well. I think it is a nice feature that a professor won't react in a negative way to a student with a wrong answer or a wrong idea. This isn't a reality though. My avatar may show that I don't like it when a teacher gets frustrated with me, but it is a better way of learning. I don't want to have a professor that just smiles all the time and shows no emotion. That being said how much emotion can an avatar really show? It doesn't seem to me like a virtual program can capture human emotion. If this program cannot capture human emotion I believe the Avatar then becomes an ineffective teacher. The best professors are the ones who get passionate about a subject. It engages the students because the teacher really cares about what they are teaching. I don't think that the avatar can achieve this, therefore the avatar will never be a superior teacher.