LESSON 6

Saturday, June 22, 2013

 IT Enters A New Learning Environment

          It is most helpful to see useful models of school learning that is ideal to achieving instructional goals through preferred application of educational technology. These are the models of Meaningful Learning, Discovery learning, Generative Learning and Constructivism.

In these conceptual models, we shall see how effective teachers best interact with students in innovative learning activities, while integrating technology to the teaching learning process.

Figure 2 – Conceptual Models of Learning

Meaningful Learning

              If the traditional learning environment gives stress focus to rote learning and simple memorization, meaningful learning gives focus to new experience departs from that is related to what the learners already knows. New experience departs from the learning of a sequence of words but attention to meaning. It assumes that:

●   Students already have some knowledge that is relevant to new learning.

●  Students are wiling to perform class work to find connections between what they already know and what they can learn.

              In the learning process, the learner is encouraged to recognize relevant personal experiences. A reward structure is set so that the learner will have both interest and confidence, and this incentive system sets a positive environment to learning. Facts that are subsequently assimilated are subjected to the learner’s understanding and application. In the classroom, hands-on activities are introduced so as to simulate learning in everyday living.

Discovery Learning

              Discovery learning is differentiated from reception learning in which ideas are presented directly to student in a well-organized way, such as through a detailed set of instructions to complete an experiment task. To make a contrast, in discovery learning student from tasks to uncover what is to be learned.

New ideas and new decision are generated in the learning process, regardless of the need to move on and depart from organized setoff activities previously set. In discovery learning, it is important that the student become personally engaged and not subjected by the teacher to procedures he/she is not allowed to depart from.

              In applying technology, the computer can present a tutorial process by which the learner is presented key concept and the rules of learning in a direct manner for receptive learning. But the computer has other uses rather than delivering tutorials. In a computer simulation process, for example, the learner himself is made to identify key concept by interacting with a responsive virtual environment.

Generative Learning

In generative learning, we have active learners who attend to learning events and generate meaning from this experience and draw inferences thereby creating a personal model or explanation to the new experience in the context of existing knowledge.

Generative learning is viewed as different from the simple process of storing information. Motivation and responsibility are seen to be crucial to this domain of learning. The area of language comprehension offers examples of this type of generative learning activities, such as in writing paragraph summaries, developing answers and questions, drawing pictures, creating paragraph titles, organizing ideas/concepts, and others. In sum, generative learning gives emphasis to what can be done with pieces of information, not only on access to them.

Constructivism

In constructivism, the learner builds a personal understanding through appropriate learning activities and a good learning environment. The most accepted principles constructivism are:

●    Learning consists in what a person can actively assemble for himself and not what he can receive passively.

●   The role of learning is to help the individual live/adapt to his personal world.

These two principles in turn lead to three practical implications:

●  The learner is directly responsible for learning. He creates personal understanding and transforms information into knowledge. The teacher plays an indirect role by modeling effective learning, assisting, facilitating and encouraging learners.

●  The context of meaningful learning consists in the learner “connecting” his school activity with real life.

●  The purpose of education is the acquisition of practical and personal knowledge, not abstract or universal truths.

           To review, there are common themes to these four learning domains. They are given below:

Learners

●      are active, purposeful learners.

●      set personal goals and strategies to achieve these goals.

●      make their learning experience meaningful and relevant to their lives.

●   seek to build an understanding of their personal worlds so they can work/live productively.

●    build on what they already know in order to interpret and respond to new experiences.

LESSON 3

Friday, June 21, 2013

EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY IN THE ASIA PACIFIC REGION

            To provide confidence to educators that they are taking the right steps in adopting technology in education, it is good to know that during the last few years, progressive countries in the Asia Pacific region have formulated state policies and strategies to infuse technology in schools. The reason for this move is not difficult to understand since there is now a pervasive awareness that a nation’s socio-economic success in the 21^st century is linked to how well it can compete in a global information and communication technology (ICT) region. This imperative among nations has therefore given tremendous responsibilities on educators to create an educational technology environment in schools.

            And since it is understood that state policies will continue to change, it is helpful to examine prevailing ICT policies and strategies of five progressive states/city, namely New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong.

            New Zealand 2001 ICT Goals and Strategy

            (Web link for more a detailed document)

            http://www.tki.org.nz/ict/

Goal

            Government with the education and technology sectors, community groups, and industry envisions to support to the development of the capability of schools to use information and communication technologies in teaching-and-learning and in administration.

Strategy

            It foresees schools to be:

·         Improving learning outcomes for students using ICT to support the curriculum.

·         Using ICT to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of educational administration.

·         Developing partnerships with communities to enhance access to learning through ICT.

Focus areas

·         Infrastructure for increasing school’s access to ICTs to enhance education

·         Professional development so that school managers and teachers can increase their capacity to use ICT

Initiatives

·         An On-line Resource Center with a centrally managed website for the delivery of multimedia resources to schools

·         A computer recycling scheme

·         A planning and implementation guide for schools

·         ICT professional development schools/clusters

Australia IT Initiatives

(http://www.deet.gov.au/schools/Adelaide/text.htm)

            In the Adelaide Declaration on National Goals for schools, information technology is one of the eight national goals/learning areas students should achieve. Students should be confident, creative and productive users of new technologies on society.

            The plans for achieving the national goal for IT are left to individuals states and territories with the Educational Network Australia (EdNA) as the coordinating and advisory body. Across the states and territories, the common features to planning, funding and implementation strategies are:

·         Fast local and wide area networks linking schools across the state and territory

·         Substantial number of computers in schools, ensuring adequate access

·         Continuing teacher training in the use of technology for instruction

·         Technical support to each school

·         Sufficient hardware and software

·         Digital library resources

·         Technology demonstrations as models for schools

Malaysia Smart School-level Technology Project

(http:/www.ppk.kpm.my/smartschool/)

            Technology plays many roles in a Smart School from facilitating teaching-and-learning activities to assisting with school management. Fully equipping a school includes:

·         Classrooms with multimedia, presentation facilities, e-mail, and groupware for collaborative work

·         Library media center with database for multimedia courseware and network access to the internet

·         Computer laboratory for teaching, readily accessible multimedia and audiovisual equipment

·         Multimedia development center with tools for creating multimedia materials. Computer studies as a subject

·         Studio/theatrette with control room for centralized audiovisual equipment, teleconferencing studio, audio room, video and laser disc video room

·         Teachers’ room with on-line access to courseware catalogues and databases, information and resource management systems and professional networking tools, such as e-mail and groupware

·         Server room equipped to handle applications, management databases and web servers

·         Administration offices capable of managing databases of students and facilities, tracking student and teacher performance and resources, distributing notices and other information electronically

Singapore Masterplan for IT in Education

(http://www.moe.edu.sg/iteducation/masterplan/welcome.htm)

The masterplan has four key dimensions:

            Curriculum and assessment

·         A balance between acquisitions of factual knowledge and mastery of concepts and skills

·         Students in more active and independent learning

·         Assessment to measure abilities in applying information, thinking and communicating

Learning resources

·         Development of a wide range of educational software for instruction

·         Use of relevant Internet resources for teaching-and-learning

·         Convenient and timely procurement of software materials

Teacher development

·                     Training on purposeful use of IT for teaching

·                     Equipping each trainee teacher with core skills in teaching with IT

·                     Tie-ups with institutions of higher learning and industry partners

Physical and technological infrastructure

·                     Pupil computer ratio of 2:1

·                     Access to IT in all learning areas in the school

·                     School-wide network, and school linkages through wide area network(WAN), eventually connected to Singapore ONE (a broadband access service for high-speedy delivery of multimedia services on island-wide basis

Hong Kong Education Program Highlights

(http://www.info.gov.hk/emb/prog_high/schoolprog.html)

            Government aims to raise the quality of school education by promoting the use of IT in teaching and learning. The IT initiatives are:

·                     On average, 40 computers for each primary school and 82 computers for each secondary school

·                     About 85,000 IT training places for teachers at four levels

·                     Technical support for all schools

·                     An Information Education Resource Center for all schools and teachers

·                     An IT coordinator for each of 250 schools which should have sound IT plans

·                     Computer rooms for use by students after normal school hours

·                     An IT Pilot Scheme to provide schools with additional resources

·                     Review of school curriculum to incorporate IT elements

·                     Development of appropriate software in collaboration with government,    the private sector, tertiary institutions and schools

·                     Exploring the feasibility of setting up an education-specific intranet

LESSON5

LESSON5

State-of-the-art-ET

application process

Looking through progressive state policies that support technology-in-education, and other new developments in pedagogical practice, our educators today have become more aware and active in adopting state-of-the-art educational technology practices they can possibly adopt.

The following trends should also be recognized by educators:

·         Through school and training center computer courses, present-day students have become computer literate. They send e-mail, prepare computer encoded class reports, even make PowerPoint presentation sometimes to the surprise of media tradition-bound teachers.

·      Following the call for developing critical thinking among students, teachers have deemphasized rote learning and have spent more time in methods to allow students to comprehend/internalize lessons.

·      Shifting focus from low-level traditional learning outcomes, student assessment/examinations have included measurement of higher level learning outcomes such as creative and critical thinking skills.

·      Recent teaching –learning models (such as constructivism and social constructivism) have paved the way for instructional approaches in which students rely less on teachers as information-givers, and instead more on their efforts to acquire information, build their own knowledge, and solve problems.

Virtue is in moderation and so, there is truly a need for teachers to balance their time to the preparation and application of instructional tools. Through wise technical advice, schools can also acquire the most appropriate computer hardware and software. At the same time, training should ensure that the use of ET is fitted to learning objectives. In addition, teachers should acquire computer skills for so that they can serve as models in integrating educational technology in the teaching-learning process.

       

FIGURE 1 – SYSTEMATIC INSTRUCTIONAL PLANNING PROCESS

Following modern trends in technology-related education, schools should now foster a student-centered learning environment, wherein students are given leeway to use computer information sources in their assignments, reports and presentation in written, visual, or dramatic forms.

All these suggestion show that teachers and schools can no longer avoid the integration of educational technology in instruction. Especially in the coming years, when portable and mobile computing will make computing activities easier to perform, the approaches to classroom pedagogy musts change. And with continuing changes in high-speed communication, mass storage of data, including the revolutionary changes among school libraries, educators should be open for more drastic educational changes in the years ahead.

LESSON 12

Saturday, June 22, 2013

 Information Technology in Support of Student-Centered Learning Classroom

The idea of student-centered learning is not a recent idea. In fact, as early as the 20^th century, educational educators such as John Dewey argued for highly active and individualized pedagogical methods which place the student at the center of the learning process.

            In this lesson, we shall see how the teacher can expand his options to make himself more effective and relevant in the 21^st millennium information age. In addition, suggestions shall be made on how a student-centered classroom (SCL) can be supported by information technology (IT).

The Traditional Classroom

            It may be observed that classroom are usually arranged with neat columns and rows of student chairs, while the teacher stands in front of the classroom or sits behind his desks. This situations is necessitated by the need to maintain classroom discipline, also they allow the teachers to control classroom activities through lecture presentation and teacher-led discussion.

Noticeably, however, after spending so many minutes in lesson presentation and class management, students can get restless and fidgety. Often enough, the teacher has to also mange misbehavior in class as students start to talk among themselves or simply stare away in lack attention. To prevent this situation, teachers often make students take time to work individually on worksheets can help the situation.

Another option is now presented and this is adopting the idea of developing students to be independent learners with the end of making them critical and creative thinkers.

The SCL classroom

          John Dewey described the traditional learning process in which the teacher pours information to students learners, much like pouring water from a jug into cups. This is based on the long accepted belief that the teacher must perform his role of teaching so that learning can occur. This learning approach is generally known as direct instruction, and it has worked well for obtaining many kind of learning outcomes.

              The problem with the direct instruction approach to learning, however, is the fact that the world’s societies have began to change. Of course, this change may not be strongly felt in many countries in which the economy longer depends primarily on factory workers who do repetitive work without thinking on the job. The traditional classroom and direct instruction approach to learning conform to this kind of economies.

           In contrast, industrialized societies we find knowledge based economies in which workers depends on information that can be accessed through information and communication technologies (ICTs). Desiring to gain effectiveness, efficiency and economy in administration and instructions, schools in these developed economies have also adopted the support of ICTs. Their students have now become active not passive learners, who can interact with other learners, demonstrating independence and self-awareness in the learning process.

Generally the new school classroom environment is characterized by student individually or in group:

·         Performing computer word processing for text or graph presentation

·         Preparing power-point presentation

·         Searching for information on the internet

·         Brainstorming on ideas, problems and project plans

·     As needed, the teacher facilitating instruction, also giving individual instruction to serve individual needs.

            Observably, there is departure from traditional worksheet, read-and-answer, and drill-and-practice activities. Students also no longer need to mark the test of peers since the computer has programs for test evaluation and computerized scoring of results.

Given this trend in teaching-and-learning, it must be pointed out, however, that traditional classroom activities-especially in less developed countries-will continue to have a strong place in the classroom. In spite of this setback experienced in some countries, the option has now been opened for the modern teacher to shift gears to students centered learning.