While both articles read for this week really opened my eyes to the possibilities of technology in the classroom, I have to say I'm still not completely sold on the idea of using teaching agents or avatars in the secondary classroom. In response to the Doering et. al article study Conversational Agents and Their Longitudinal Affordances on Communication and Interaction, I have to say I share in the students' skepticism of using these digital avatars as a teaching agent. The study's findings, to me, seemed to be a (for lack of a better phrase) complete "duh", and I'm not sure that these so-called teaching agents can be used for any more than entertainment purposes.

The study first found that "participants reported that CAs provided limited support of their learning process during the eFolio development." Of course they did. Additionally, "participants found that CAs were not as supportive as hoped for
specific tasks in the eFolio development." I think that no matter what form of technology we use, it would be very difficult to replace face-to-face contact and interaction. I'm not sure that a conversational agent, while an "expert" in their respective field but who is still relying on transcripts of speech to relay their message can be as beneficial as live feedback. The one-sidedness of the conversational agents also concerns me. The also study said "participants appeared most frustrated when content-related questions that they felt should be “routine” or “standard” could not be answered correctly." In this sense, I think the most important thing is that as with any form of technology in the classroom, it should ENHANCE what you already have. If the conversational agents are essentially creating more frustration by not being able to answer questions properly and wasting students' time, I don't really see them as making learning easier.

I do see the benefit in conversational agents being able to offer 24/7 student support when the professor is not available. But what concerns me is that the avatar may only be able to answer the most basic questions (probably not help in detail, which is generally where most student questions come from - the specifics.) What also concerns me about this is the amount of time it would take on behalf of the professor or teacher in preparing the answers for the teaching agent. Is that amount of extra effort really worth answering emails or holding an extra session of office hours?

The point is, I think technology should be used in the classroom if it can help our students actually learn something. While the avatar was entertaining for me to make and experiment with, I can't realistically say I would be able to use this in a secondary (I'm thinking of my 11th graders here) classroom. I mostly just envision it not being taken seriously, even with a good amount of prep and scaffolding. As the study shows, it seems that these avatars seem to be more frustrating than helpful for students.

While I can't really see it being used as-is in the class, it does raise some interesting questions for me about the future of technology in the classroom. I'm already a little disturbed at the fact that I can take entire classes (such as this one) without ever stepping foot in a classroom. Are conversational agents a stepping stone to completely interactive online classes? If so, then I would see the benefit in using something this, as creepy as that would be. Until then, I'm not really sure of the purpose of using avatars in teaching, and am going to need a lot more convincing before I would use this in a classroom.