SUNY Buffalo State TLE TeachLivE™

The TLE TeachLivE™ Experience

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the TLE TeachLivE™ Lab, pre-service and in-service teachers walk into a room where everything looks like a middle or high school classroom - including props, whiteboards, and of course, the students! Avatars are scripted to portray typically developing students, or students with more complex learning needs, depending on the objectives of the experience. Each student has their own distinct personality, based on Long's Adolescent Psychological Profile. While the avatars cannot capture every trait that a student  may exhibit, their personalities are representative of those typically observed within classroom environments. Each avatar has an extensive back-story so the more sessions that the participant uses TeachLivE, the more opportunity they have to learn about thier personalities!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In actual classrooms, students may become bored and difficult to manage when an instruction or management routine is repeated. In the TLE TeachLivE™ lab, instruction and management routines may be repeated with an individual teacher or across several teachers using the same instructional context until the routine is mastered. Participants interact with the student avatars, review previous work, present new content, provide scaffolding or guided practice in a variety of content areas, and monitor students while they work independently.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The instruction or management context may then be systematically changed to examine how participants’ respond to a changing classroom environment. If novice teachers perform poorly or if experienced teachers want to experiment with a new teaching idea, using TLE TeachLivE™ poses no danger to the learning of actual students. Faculty can arrange for teacher candidates to gain experience in behavior management, and select the level of inattention or inappropriate behaviors as a mechanism for proficiency in maintaining a productive classroom. Low frequency behaviors can also be incorporated into sessions to prepare teacher candidates to correctly respond to critical situations that may occur when teaching a student with exceptional needs.