Lesson 3: The Roles of Technology Educ 4: Educational Technology 1 Lesson 3: The Roles of Technology

What are the roles of educational technology in learning? Focus Question: What are the roles of educational technology in learning?

Individual Thinking Time Task: Recall specific ways by which the use of educational technology helped you learn.

Roles of Technology Traditional Constructivist Technology helps the learner build more meaningful personal interpretations of life and his/her world. The learner learns from the technology and the technology serves as a teacher.

Traditional The learners learn the content presented by the technology in the same way that the learner learns knowledge presented by the teacher.

Technology serves as a source and presenter of knowledge Technology serves as a source and presenter of knowledge. It assumed that "knowledge is embedded in the technology (e.g. The content presented by films and tv programs of the teaching sequence in program instruction) and the technology presents that knowledge to the student. (David H. Johanssen, et al, 1999)

Constructivist Technology is a learning tool to learn with, not from. It makes the learner gather, think, analyze, synthesize information and construct meaning with what technology presents. Technology serves as a medium in representing what the learner knows and what he/she is learning.

Educational technology serves as learning tools that learners learn with. It engages learners in "active, constructive, intentional, authentic, and cooperative learning. It provides opportunities for technology and learner interaction for meaningful learning. In this case, technology will not be mere delivery vehicle for content. Rather it used as facilitator of thinking and knowledge construction.

Roles of technology in learning from a constructivist perspective: Technology as tools to support knowledge construction: for representing learners' ideas, understandings and beliefs ; for producing organized, multimedia knowledge bases by learners Technology as information vehicles for exploring knowledge to support learning-by-constructing: for accessing needed information; for comparing perspectives, beliefs, and world views

Technology as context to support learning-by- doing: for representing and simulating meaningful real - world problems, situations and contexts; for representing beliefs, perspectives, arguments, and stories of others; for defining a safe, controllable problem space for student thinking Technology as a social medium to support learning by conversing: for collaborating with others; for discussing, arguing, and building consensus among members of a community; for supporting discourse among knowledge - building communities.

Technology as intellectual partner (Johanssen 1996) to support learning - by - reflecting: for helping learners to articulate and represent what we know; for reflecting on what they have learned and how they came to know it; for supporting learners internal negotiations and meaning making; for constructing personal representations of meaning; for supporting mindful thinking

Which is better... Traditional or Constructivist ????

Whether used from the traditional or constructivist point of view, when used effectively, research indicates that technology "increases students' understanding and achievement but also augments motivation to learn, encourages collaborative learning and supports the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills." (Schacter and Fagnano, 1999)

Russell and Sorge (1999) also claims that the proper implementation of technology in the classroom gives students more "control of their own learning and ...tends to move classrooms from teacher -dominated environments to ones that are more learner-centered.

The use of technology in the classroom enables the teacher to do differentiated instruction considering the divergence of students' readiness levels, interests, multiple intelligences, and learning styles. Technology also helps learners become lifelong learners.