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LESSON 6: IT Enters A Lew 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.

MEANINGFUL LEARNING
Meaningful learning refers to the concept that the learned knowledge (lets say a fact) is fully understood by the individual and that the individual knows how that specific fact relates to other stored facts (stored in your brain that is). For understanding this concept, it is good to contrast meaningful learning with the much less desirable, rote learning.

MEANINGFUL LEARNING differs


Rote learning is where you memorize something without full understanding and you don't know how the new information relates to your other stored knowledge.

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

MEANINGFUL LEARNING continues


It assumes that: Students already have some knowledge that is relevant to new learning Students are willing to perform class work to find connections between what they already know and what they can learn.

M.L. continues
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 learners understanding and application. Hands-on activities are introduced.

DISCOVERY LEARNING means


Discovery learning is based on this Aha! method. Discovery learning takes place most notably in problem solving situations where the learner draws on his own experience and prior knowledge to discover the truths that are to be learned. It is a personal, internal, constructivist learning environment.

DISCOVERY LEARNING continues


Bruner wrote, Emphasis on discovery in learning has precisely the effect on the learner of leading him to be a constructionist, to organize what he is encountering in a manner not only designed to discover regularity and relatedness, but also to avoid the kind of information drift that fails to keep account of the uses to which information might have to be put.

DISCOVERY LEARNING differs


Discovery Learning is differentiated from reception learning in which ideas are presented directly to students in a wellorganized way, such as through a detailed set of instructions to complete an experiment or task. In discovery learning, students perform tasks to uncover what is to be learned.

DISCOVERY LEARNING continues


New ideas and new decisions are generated in the learning process, regardless of the need to move on and depart from organized setoff activities previously set. In d.l., it is important that the students become personally engaged and not subjected by the teacher to procedures they are not allowed to depart from.

DISCOVERY LEARNING ends


You can't teach people everything they need to know. The best you can do is position them where they can find what they need to know when they need to know it. - Seymour Papert

GENERATIVE LEARNING means


Learners actively participate in the learning process and generate knowledge by forming mental connections between concepts. Two types of generative activities: Activities that generate organizational relationships (titles, headings, questions, objectives, summaries, graphs, tables, and main ideas)

GENERATIVE LEARNING means...


Activities that generate integrated relationships between what the learner sees, hears, or reads and memory (demonstrations, metaphors, analogies, examples, pictures, applications, interpretations, paraphrases, inferences)

GENERATIVE LEARNING continues..


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 ends


Generative learning is viewed as different from the simple process of storing information. Motivation and responsibility are seen to the crucial to this domain of learning. The area of language comprehension offers examples of this type of generative learning activities, such as writing paragraph summaries, developing questions and answers, and so on.

CONSTRUCTIVISM means
Constructivism is basically a theory -based on observation and scientific study -about how people learn. It says that people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences.

CONSTRUCTIVISM means
When we encounter something new, we have to reconcile it with our previous ideas and experience, maybe changing what we believe, or maybe discarding the new information as irrelevant. In any case, we are active creators of our own knowledge. To do this, we must ask questions, explore, and assess what we know.

CONSTRUCTIVISM: What?
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.

CONSTRUCTIVISM continues
These two principles in turn lead to three practical implications: The learner is directly responsible for learning. He creates personal understanding and transform information into knowledge. The teacher plays an indirect role by modeling effective learning, assisting, facilitating and encouraging learners.

CONSTRUCTIVISM continues
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.

CONSTRUCTIVISM applies
In the classroom, the constructivist view of learning can point towards a number of different teaching practices. In the most general sense, it usually means encouraging students to use active techniques (experiments, real-world problem solving) to create more knowledge and then to reflect on and talk about what they are doing and how their understanding is changing.

CONSTRUCTIVISM applies
The teacher makes sure she understands the students' preexisting conceptions, and guides the activity to address them and then build on them. Constructivist teachers encourage students to constantly assess how the activity is helping them gain understanding.

CONSTRUCTIVISM applies
By questioning themselves and their strategies, students in the constructivist classroom ideally become "expert learners." This gives them ever-broadening tools to keep learning. With a well-planned classroom environment, the students learn HOW TO LEARN.

Finally, CONSTRUCTIVISM...
The best way for you to really understand what constructivism is and what it means in your classroom is by seeing examples of it at work, speaking with others about it, and trying it yourself. As you progress through each segment of this workshop, keep in mind questions or ideas to share with your colleagues.

A Review
There are common themes to these four learning domains. Learners are: Are active, purposeful learners. Set personal goals and strategies to achieve these goals. Make learning experience meaningful and relevant to their lives. Seek to build an understanding of their personal worlds so they can work/live productively.

A Review continues
Build on what they already know in order to interpret and respond to new experiences. Through these new conceptual models of learning, we now know that there are better ways to learn other than rote learning or memorization and that learning is for use not only in school but in real life. END!!!

LESSON T: IT for Higher Thinking Skills and Creativity In the traditional information absorption model of teaching, the teacher organizes and presents information to student-learners. He may use a variety of teaching resources to support the lesson such as the chalkboard, videotape, newspaper or magazine and photos. The presentation is followed by discussion and the giving of assignment.

Today, students are expected to be not only cognitive, but also flexible, analytical and creative. In this lesson, there are methods proposed for the use of computer-based technologies as an integral support to higher thinking skills and creativity.

Higher Level Learning Outcomes


Complex Thinking Skills Sub-skills
1. Defining the problem, goal/objective-setting, brainstorming 2. Selection, recording of data of information 3. Associating, relating new data with old 4. Identifying idea constructs, patterns

1. Focusing 2. Information gathering 3. Remembering 4. Analyzing

Thinking Skills Framework


5. Generating 6. Organizing 7. Imagining 8. Designing 9. Integration 10. Evaluating
5. Deducing, inducting, elaborating 6. Classifying, relating 7. Visualizing, predicting 8. Planning, formulating 9. Summarizing, abstracting 10. Setting criteria, testing idea, verifying outcomes, revising

The Upgraded Project Method


To bring students to the higher domains of learning and achieving, the project method is suggested. The Project method for Higher Learning Outcomes consists in having the students work on projects with depth, complexity, duration and relevance to the real world.

In this revised project method, there is a tighter link between the use of projects for simply coming up with products to having the students undergo the process of complex/higher thinking under the framework of the contructivist paradigm. Under this framework, the students make decisions about what to put into the project, how to organize information, how to package the outcomes for presentation, and the like.

The Process
The process of project implementation takes the students to the steps, efforts, and experiences in project completion. Take note that: THE PROCESS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE PRODUCT. (Any reaction from the class?)

The process refers to the thinking/ effective/ psycho-motor process that occurs on the part of the learner. This comprises the journey that actualizes learning. The product is the result of this allimportant process consisting in possibly a summary, a poster, an essay, a term paper, a dramatic presentation, or an IT-based product.

DISCUSSION
1. Does the new framework on higher thinking skills and creativity means that teachers should no longer make efforts to help students pass/ excel in achievement tests? Explain. 2. Can these complex thinking skills be also achieved even without using educational technology tools? Explain.

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