community. The TIMSSE experience in the cyber classroom demonstrates in unprecedented ways
the extent to which constructivist principles are influential in a technology-mediated learning
environment.
Our experiences with technology-mediated learning in the TIMSSE series have offered
some preliminary responses to the question we initially asked: what role is there for technology to
play in education? We have discovered the opportunities as well as the limits that exist to create a
novel learning experience to nurture a transcontinental educational community. Through our
dialogue we learned the ways in which the digital divide is very real in conflict regions. Their
populations still experience an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ feeling that contributes to nationalist sentiment.
The real-time, synchronous dialogue we created at minimal cost with the use of inclusive
communications tools was by far the most significant aspect of our learning experience. This
dialogue offered us the chance to invite direct, extended participation directly from the region that
was constructive and informative in nature. Those in the Balkans critiqued literature sources we
were using, provided real life experience from the field, and offered their own perspectives to
analyse conflict and the potential to prevent the cycles of discord that endure there. Our use of
primary sources, structured dialogue and presentations by those with practical experience in the
Balkans and in the field of conflict prevention enriched our learning together as an emerging
community. We drew on the first-hand knowledge of those in the region to help students in our
learning community to realize the ways in which they were implicated in the Balkans
development as agents in global affairs. The immediacy of our contacts in real time each week as
well as the intervening exchanges via email and listservs strengthened the connections we felt to
those in the region.
Most importantly, the inquiries we confronted engaged our awareness of the fact that
with all that technology affords us in and out of the classroom we still face, as educators and
citizens, those larger philosophical differences that distinguish the traditions of realism and
19
Convention