IT in Traditional and Student-Centered Learning

Lesson 12 – Information Technology in Support of Student-Centered Learning

In today’s globalizing world, many kinds of jobs and professions are performed by people who can do more than just the routine tasks like encoding, stamping, and basing answers from standard formulas and solutions. Jobs today, moreover, do not just require manual labor. They entail worker capacities in problem-solving, analytical and critical thinking, and decision-making for modernized jobs such as in marketing, advertising, and so on.

The BIG question is:

How can students be ready for these kinds of jobs they are to face in their future?

You already have an idea how a traditional classroom instruction works, don’t you? As I have discussed in my previous blog, the traditional classroom has the teacher sitting or standing in front of the classroom, facing the students who are all ears to the teacher’s lecture. Here, the teacher is the deliverer and the main speaker in the classroom. The students respond to questions and answer worksheets and quizzes to identify and measure what they have learned in the lesson proper. 

The outcomes of traditional classroom instruction are students who are good at understanding, memorizing, and reciting information learned in their traditionally delivered subjects. There is no black propaganda against this kind of classroom setting for it has proven to create great professionals who are also purposeful members of the society. However, there is always a BETTER kind or classroom instruction that could make even BETTER-performing students.

What I am talking about now is the student-centered learning (SCL), where students do much during the learning process. Students learn by working in groups; they are the ones discussing problems, making decisions, solving problems, and presenting solutions in the class. This kind of instruction allows students to develop, employ, and improve their higher order thinking skills (HOTS) that will lead them to gain effectiveness as learners.

Both traditional and student-centered instructions can be more efficient and effectual when they are supplemented by information and communication technologies (ICTs). The teacher can always plan and select the most useful ICT she can use in the classroom that can make the learning further improved. She can assign tasks that can be done in the computer by students in groups. A case study, for example, can be a great activity for students. A computer program can be used for this matter given that it presents a case to be studied by students, allows them to input all the processed information, permits them to create a newsletter by a word publisher, and engages them into interactive reciprocation of feedback from one group to another . Through this constructive ICT activity that presents a real life-like assignment, the students become more active individuals who are self-aware of the learning process. 

 Senator Murray describes her vision 

for the future of learning where all students 

have access to technology that provides 

a customized, connected, and engaging learning experience.

Let’s go ICT!

Lesson 15 – Understanding Hypermedia

What is HYPERMEDIA?

There are many ways to define Hypermedia.

“Hypermedia is basically a computer-based information retrieval system that enables a user to gain or provide access to texts, audio and video recordings, photographs and computer graphics related to a particular subject.” (Wikipedia)

“Hypermedia is used as a logical extension of the term hypertext in which graphics, audio, video, plain text and hyperlinks intertwine to create a generally non-linear medium of information. This contrasts with the broader term multimedia, which may be used to describe non-interactive linear presentations as well as hypermedia.” (Webopedia)

“Hypermedia is a style of building systems for organising, structuring and accessing information around a network of multimedia nodes connected together by links.” (Conclin, 1987)

I’ve got a hyper-treat for you!

 Hyperland is a film made in 1990 that focuses on Douglas Adams and explains adaptive hypertext and hypermedia.

In education, we can define hypermedia as a variant of the broader term multimedia but is designed to be of assistance to the learning process in schools for students. As an instructional media, the hypermedia is packaged as an educational computer software where lessons are presented in a more exciting, adventurous, and virtual way. It is said that most educational IT applications are hypermedia and these include:

Tutorial Software Packages

 

Knowledge Web Pages

 

Simulation Instructional Games

Learning Project Management

The hypermedia lets the students experience its outstanding feature that enables them to learn at their own pace and skills. The students choose their path, flow, and events of instructions themselves. They can try various kinds of activities and move on to the next ones even half finishing the previous activities. That is one good thing about the hypermedia—it is non-linear, thus, giving its users (usually learners) to navigate sites according to their own desired routes.

Without a doubt, hypermedia is another helpful tool in education. However, just like everything, it also has its flaws.

Hypermedia involves numerous kinds of media such as text, audio, photos, and videos, but it does not necessarily use all those types in just one presentation. The virtual learning feature may be one of its greatest points; however, the teacher still needs to make the instruction more efficient by choosing the most appropriate program for the students and by measuring the hypermedia’s pros and cons to the learning process. Hence, it is still in the teacher’s hands to decide on which specific aspects and how long the instructional program will be used in the classroom.

Lesson 10 – The Computer as a Tutor

One of the greatest inventions of all times is the computer—a technological gadget that can unbelievably perform a vast multitude of tasks that we, humans, originally do to fulfill our roles in different fields such as in commerce, communications, and education.

Educators are very much aware of the immense aid the computer can provide to the teaching-learning process, especially in today’s educational situation where individualized learning seems to be the hardest goal for all teachers to achieve. In a public school classroom, there are approximately 40 or more students per class who are taught by only a single teacher. The problem starts there. How can a teacher educate all of her students well?

Then there came the so-called Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI). Here, computer units are made available in classes where they serve as tutors for students while they are learning their lessons.  Students, while assisted by the teacher from time to time, can perform tasks in the computer according to their own pace and skills, thus, making the learning process more individualized. This may seem ideal for a country like ours where the unending problem regarding the scarcity of classroom resources seems to be irresolvable. Nevertheless, CAI is something that we, Filipino educators, should look forward to since the assistance granted by the computer in the teaching-learning process is significantly favorable to the students as well as to the teachers.

CAI basically rei nforces learning through repetitive exercises such as the drill-and-practice programs for simple mathematical problems, vocabulary exercises, and multiple choice questions that help students know and retain learned information through repetition. A good thing about CAI programs is that they provide immediate feedback to the answers of students, which can make the learning process faster and more efficient.

More than just practicing and questioning about what the students already know, CAI can also introduce new content or information, provide comprehensive concepts in addition to practice exercises, and allow group activity for cooperative learning.  Forms of CAI can be enumerated as simulation programs (ex. SimCity), instructional games (ex. GeoSafari), problem-solving software (ex. Thinking Things 1), multimedia encyclopedia (ex. Children’s Encyclopedia), and electronic books (ex. Just Grandma and Me).
Here is an example of an online lesson that serves as tutor for student-learners:

CAI is indeed a helpful innovation in education. As mentioned above, it helps students review old knowledge and learn new concepts. It is certainly beneficial to both educators and learners. However, it just provides us ‘assistance’ while holding the class and it is not the end-all of learning. Much more is needed to make the learning process more meaningful and effective. Thus, no matter how grand its contribution is to learning, it can NEVER EVER replace the role done by teachers. I am sure everyone agrees to that.

A Challenge for Teachers: Produce Better and Brighter Students through IT

In my previous blog, I have already described the traditional classroom instruction that is proven to produce smart students who can openly receive, recall, and recite knowledge learned inside the classroom.

A categorization of the learning outcomes achieved in the teaching-learning process is best illustrated in Bloom’s Taxonomy:

 As you may notice, the skills achieved by students in the traditional setting are found the lower levels of the diagram. A challenge is hereby presented to teachers – to produce better and brighter students who can achieve the abilities on the higher level of the taxonomy.

Information technology (IT) is one of the keys to achieve that goal. In Lesson 7 – IT for Higher Thinking Skills and Creativity, there are proposed ways on how teachers can use computer-based technologies as an essential part in developing the higher order thinking skills (HOTS) and creativity of students.

As teachers, it is more fulfilling to give projects not just for formality or for grading purposes; we should plan our activities well. We have to consider the gains our students can have after finishing the tasks we assign to them. Plus, we can make the project method more exciting, collaborative, and applicable when we allow students to make use of technology that is unquestionably a huge part of our lives today.

One way that a teacher can use is the Upgraded Project Method (UPM). Here, students are assigned to do tasks that are very much related to the real world. The projects to be given are more complex and in-depth than the ordinary library research or summarization tasks. Moreover, this new method involves students into active discovery and manipulation of information as they connect ideas on topics to their daily lives. Various computer-based projects can be assigned to student groups such as doing research works that are relevant to their daily lives, and then producing newsletters that they can publish in the Internet through blogs.

In UPM, the students are the ones to decide on what information to put, the ways on how to gather data, the methods to interpret the collected information, and the strategies to present the results in class. An important principle should be followed in UPM:

“The process is more important than the product.”

The teacher, as moderator/facilitator of the activity, focuses on the students’ performance DURING the production of the project. Although the final outcome greatly matters, the PROCESS is the period when students show off their capabilities and apply HOTS specifically in analyzing ideas, problem-solving, and decision-making, which lead to their individual and even group development.

Naomi Moir, a teacher trainer at Oxford University Press, 

talks about her experience of using projects in the classroom 

and whether they convey any benefit to the students.

As teachers and teachers-to-be, let us remember that a student’s gain is his teacher’s as well. Thus, when we see our students being more in control of their skills and themselves, we, as teachers, feel fulfilled with their achievement.

Enjoy your day!

Integrating Technology in Instruction

These days, teaching inside a classroom is viewed as more effective when appropriate educational technologies are applied properly. A classroom setting where the teacher stands in front of the classroom while discussing the lectures, asking questions to students, and doing pencil-and-paper quizzes is commonly called as the traditional classroom instruction. It is an undeniable fact that many schools, such as those that we have here in the Philippines, still apply this kind of instruction. It is not bad at all. The traditional setting is actually the fundamental technique on how we learn as students; however, the introduction of new teaching strategies and helpful instructional materials in classrooms would make the education in our country so much better.

In LESSON 4 – BASIC CONCEPTS ON INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY IN INSTRUCTION, we could learn many things about the meaning, use, and manifestations of technology in classrooms. One vital definition of this technological integration is given by Pisapia (1994):

“Integrating technology with teaching means the use of learning technologies to introduce, reinforce, supplement, and extend skills... The difference between the classrooms of exemplary users of technology and technology users is the way their classes are conducted. In the exemplary classrooms, student use of computers is woven integrally into the patterns of teaching; software is a natural extension of student tools.”

Nevertheless, technological gadgets such as the computer should not just be physically INSIDE the classroom but be of great help in the teaching-learning process. There should be INTRODUCTION, REINFORCEMENT, SUPPLEMENTATION, and EXTENSION of students’ skills not just in operating the computer, but of the more essential and higher order thinking abilities such as analytical thinking and problem-solving capacity.

I just remembered a story told to me by my friend, who was an English teacher in a foreign school in Quezon City. There was a time when a class of Korean students would not want to listen to her co-teacher, so what that teacher did was to make her students play with their Portable Play Station (PSP) all day long! That was bad! Clearly, this kind of situation is NOT an integration of technology in classrooms for it definitely does not give any benefit to the students’ academic performance.

In relation to this, we could fully recognize the integration of technology into instruction through the following manifestations among others:

·         Changes in the way classes are traditionally conducted

·         Improvement in the quality of instruction achieved with the use of educational technology

·         Planning of the teaching objectives and strategies to address specific instructional issues/problems


Here's a video that demonstrates how technology becomes an effective tool in the classroom.

Teachers can integrate technology into instruction in so many ways that can be categorized into different levels:

SIMPLE/BASIC INTEGRATION

• Using LCD or OHP projectors to show pictures in class
• Allowing students to do projects in Microsoft Office tools such as Word, PowerPoint, and Excel to achieve more presentable outputs

MIDDLE LEVEL INTEGRATION

• Introducing simulation games and computer-based materials to introduce a topic
• Presenting the subject using a software
• Allowing students to search for information from the Internet
• Producing leaflets, flyers, and simple printed materials using various computer software

CENTRAL INSTRUCTIONAL TOOL

• Production of newsletter by the students
• Holding video conferences among students from different schools 

Zöe Handley discusses the question of technology

in the classroom makes students more engaged or serves as a distraction.
Zöe is an OUP Research Fellow in Applied Linguistics

at the Department of Education, Oxford University, 

which has recently conducted a systematic review of the research

on the use of new technologies in EFL, 

particularly at primary and secondary level.

A teacher can always make the classroom instruction level up through the use of technology more than just for the presentation of lectures but for the further honing of the skills of her students.

Happy teaching!