Lesson 10 : The Computer as a Tutor

Computer-assisted instruction (CAI)

                The computer can be a tutor in effect relieving teacher of many activities in his personal role as classroom tutor. It should be made clear, however, that the computer cannot totally replace the teacher since the teacher shall continue to play the major roles of information deliverer and learning environment controller. Even with the available computer and CAI software, the teacher must;

    ·         Insure that students have the needed knowledge and skills for any computer activity

    ·         Decide the appropriate learning objectives

    ·         Plan the sequential and structured activities to achieve objectives

    ·         Evaluate the students’ achievements by ways of tests the specific expected outcomes.

On the other hand, the student in CAI play their own roles as learners as they;

       ·         Receive information

       ·         Understand instruction for the computer activity

       ·         Retain/keep in mind the information and rules for the computer activity

       ·         Apply the knowledge and rules during the process of computer learning

During the computer activity proper in CAI the computer too plays its roles as it:

·         Act as a sort of tutor (the role traditional played by the teacher)

·         Provides a learning environment

·         Delivers learning instruction

·         Reinforces learning through drill and practice

·         Provides feedback

Simulation Programs

           Simulation Software materials are another kind of software that is constructivist in nature. This simulation software: 

·         Teacher strategies and rules applied to real-life problems/situation

·         Ask students to make decision on models or scenarios

·         Allow students to manipulate elements of a model and get the experience of the effect of their decisions

          

  

Instructional Games

               While relating to low level learning objectives (e.g. basic spelling or math skills), instructional computer games add the elements of competition and challenge.

                

Problem Solving Software

                These are more sophisticated than the drill and practice exercises and allow students to learn and improve on their own problem solving ability. Since problems cannot be solved simply by memorizing facts, the students have to employ higher thinking skills such as logic, recognition, reflection, and strategy-making.

                

Multimedia Encyclopedia and Electronic Books

                             The Multimedia Encyclopedia can score a huge database with text, images, animation, audio and video. Students can access any desired information, search it vast contents and even download/print relevant portions of the data for their composition or presentation. An example is the eyewitness children’s encyclopedia.

                            Electronic Books provide textual information for reading supplemented by other types of multimedia information (sounds, spoken words, pictures, animation). These are useful for learning reading.

Reflection:

This are the programs and softwares under computer assisted instruction on applying teaching-learning process. It gives the motivational behavior of the learners on the lesson presented by the facilitator or the teacher. In presenting this, it is more effective and cooperative.

 

Lesson 9 : Computers as Information and Communication Technology

            Computer assisted instruction (CAI) was introduced using the principle of individualized learning through a positive climate that includes realism and appeal with drill exercise that uses color, music and animation. The novelty of CAI has not waned to this offered by computer-equipped private schools. But the evolving pace of innovation in today’s Information Age is so dynamic that within the first decade of the 21st century, computer technology in education has matured to transform into an educative information and communication technology (ICT) in education.

The Personal Computer (PC) as ICT

                Until the nineties, it was still possible to distinguish between instructional media and the educational communication media.

                Instructional media consist of audio-visual aids that served to enhance and enrich the teaching-learning process. Examples are the blackboard, photo, film, and video

                On the other hand, educational communication media comprise the media communication to audiences including learners using the print, film radio, and television or satellite means of communication.  For example, distance learning were implemented using correspondence, radio, television or the computer satellite system

                 Close to the turn of the 21st century however, such a distinction merge owing to the advert of the microprocessor, also known as the personal computer (PC). This is due to the fact that the PC user at home, office and school has before him a tool for both audio-visual creations and media communication.

 

                To illustrate, let’s examine the programs (capabilities) normally installed in an ordinary modern PC:

- Microsoft Office - program for composing text, graphics, photos into letters, articles, report, etc.

- Power point - for preparing lecture presentations.

- Excel - for spreadsheets and similar graphic sheets.

- Internet Explorer - access to the internet.

- Yahoo or Google - websites; e-mail, chat rooms, blog sites, news service (print/video) educational software etc.

- Adobe Reader - graphs/photo composition and editing.

- MSN - mail/chat messaging

- Windows media player - CD, VCD player, editing film/video

- Cyber Power - DVD player

- Gamehouse - video games

Reflection:

Through computer technology, like reading, the modern student can now interact with computer messages; even respond to question or to computer commands. Again like writing, the learner can form messages using computer language or programs. This communication media and audiovisual media makes the learners creative and innovative learning.

Lesson 8: Higher Thinking Skills through IT-Based Projects

Key Elements of a constructivist approach:


a)      The teacher creating the learning environment.

b)      The teacher giving students the tool

c)      The teacher facilitating learning.

 

Now let us see four IT-based projects conducive to develop higher thinking skills and creativity among learners.

I.   RESOURCE-BASED PROJECTS

The teacher steps out of the traditional role of being an context expert and information provider, and instead lets the students find their own facts and information.

The general flows of events in resource-based projects are:

1.The teacher determines the topic for the examination of class

2.The teacher presents the problem to the class.

3.The students find information on the problem/questions.

4.Students organize their information in response to the problem/questions.

TRADITIONAL AND RESOURCE-BASED LEARNING

Traditional learning model	Resource-based learning model
Teacher is expert and information provides	Teacher is a guide and facilitator
Textbook is key source of information	Sources are varied(print, video. Internet, etc.)
Focus on facts Information is packaged In neat parcels	Focus on learning inquiry, quest, or discovery
The product is the be-all and end-all of learning	Emphasis on process
Assessment is quantitative	Assessment is quantitative and qualitative.

 

II.   SIMPLE CREATIONS

In developing software, creativity as an outcome should not be equated with ingenuity or high intelligence. Creating is more consonant with planning, making, assembling, designing or building.

Three kinds of skills/abilities:

·        Analyzing- distinguishing similarities and differences/ seeing the project as a problem to be solved.

·        Synthesizing- making spontaneous connections among ideas, does generating interesting or new ideas.

·        Promoting- selling of a new ideas to allow the public to test the ideas themselves.

The five key task to develop creativity:

1.Define the task- clarify the goal of the completed project to the student.

2.Brainstorm- the students themselves will be allowed to generate their own ideas on the project. Rather than shoot down ideas, the teacher encourages ideas exchange.

3.Judge the ideas- the students themselves make an appraisal for or against any idea. Only when students are completely off check should the teacher intervene.

4.Act- the students do their work with the teacher a facilitator.

5.Adopt flexibility- the students should be allowed to shift gears and not follow an action path rigidly.

  III.  GUIDED HYPERMEDIA PROJECTS

The production of self-made multimedia projects can be approached into different ways:

1.Instructive tools- such as in the production by students of a power point presentation of a selective topic.

2.Constructive tools- such as when students do a multi-media presentation (with text, graphs, photos, audio narration, interviews, video clips, etc. to simulate a television news show.

IV. WEB-BASED PROJECTS

Students can be made to create and post web pages on a given topic. But creating new pages, even single page web pages, maybe tool sophisticated and time consuming fort the average student.

            It should be said, however, that posting of web pages in the Internet allows the students (now the web page creator) a wider audience. They can also be linked with other related sites in the Internet. But as of now, this creativity project maybe to ambitious as a tool in the teaching-learning process.

Reflection:

In this lesson, we shall discuss four types of IT-based projects which can effectively be used in order to engage students in activities of a higher plane of thinking. To be noted id the fact that these projects differ in the specific process and skills employed, also in the ultimate activity or platform used to communicate completed products to others.

           

            It is to be understood that these projects do not address all of the thinking skills shown previously in the Thinking Skills Framework. But these projects represent constructivist project.

Lesson 7 : IT for Higher Thingking Skills and Creativity



Higher Level Learning Outcomes

     To define higher level thinking skills and creativity, we may adopt a framework that is a helpful synthesis of many models and definitions on the subject matter. The framework is not exhaustive but a helpful guide for the teacher’s effort to understand the learner’s higher learning skills.

  Thinking Skills Framework

Complex Thinking Skills                    Sub-Skills                                                       

Focusing                                        defining the problem, goal/objective-setting,

                                                        brainstorming

Information Gathering                   selection, recording of data of information

Remembering                               associating, relating new data with Analyzing                                        identifying idea,   constructs patterns

Generating                                     deducing, inducting, elaborating                                      

Organizing                                      classifying, relating

Imagining                                        visualizing, predicting 

Designing                                       planning formulating

Integration                                      summarizing, abstracting

Evaluating                                      setting criteria, testing idea, verifying 

                                                        outcome, revising

The Upgraded Project Method

 

In this modern day, the teachers are now guided on their goal to help students achieve higher level thinking skills and creativity beyond the ordinary.

            We know the fact that the ordinary classroom is awfully lack in instructional tool kits; as a result the teacher might have a difficulty to bring the students to the higher domains of learning and achieving, so the project method is suggested.

Project Method

            Teachers assign the students to work on projects with depth, complexity duration and relevance to the real word.

            Project is utilized because students need to make the most of the decisions about what to put inside their project, how to organize their information and ideas and how to communicate their result effectively.

Upgraded Project Method

            In here, there is a tighter link between the uses of projects for simply coming up with products to have the students undergo the process of higher thinking skills under the framework of the Constructivist Paradigm.

            In this new project method, the students are advised to use computer application and high technology in doing their projects.

Constructivist Paradigm

            It emphasize on how the students construct knowledge. The students, not the teacher are the one who make decisions about what to put into the project, how to organize information, how to package the outcomes for presentation and the like.

            In doing projects, there are two things that are involved: the process and the product.

Process- refers to the steps, effort and experiences in project completion.

Product - is the result or the end point of the process.

Reflection:

                 New challenge has arisen for today's learners and this is not simply to achieve learning objectives but to encourage the development of students who can do more than receive, recall, recite and apply knowledge  they have acquired. Today, students are expected to be not only cognitive, but also flexible, analytical and creative. In this lesson, there are methods proposed by the use of computer-based as an integral support to higher thinking skills and creativity. In spite of this higher thinking methods the teachers, students, schools and administration must know the appropriate computer softwares, hardwares and also their own skills to do this  on applying to the teaching-learning process.

Lesson 6: IT enters a New Learning Environment

Conceptual Models of Learning

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 learners already know. New experience departs from the learning of a sequence of words but gives attention to its meaning. 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 know and what they can learn.

          In the learning process, the learners are encouraged to recognize relevant personal experiences. A reward structure is set so that the learner will have both interest and confidence, and his 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 students in a well organized way, such as through detailed set of instructions to complete an experiment or task. To make a contrast, in discovery learning students perform tasks to uncover what to be learned. New ideas and new decisions are generated in the learning process, regardless of the need to move on or depart from organized set off activities previously set. In discovery learning, it is important that the students become personally engaged and not subjected by the teacher to procedures he/she is not allowed to depart from.

Generative Learning

                     In generative learning we have learners who attend to learning events and generate to learning events and generate meaning from this experience and draw inferences thereby creating a personal model or explanations to the new experience in the context of the 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 a piece 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 of constructivism are

-        Learning consist in what a person can actively assemble for himself and not what he can received

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 his 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 school activity with real life.

-        The purpose of education is the acquisition of practical knowledge, not abstract or universal truth.

Reflection:


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. It  gives teacher's idea on how they can improve the learning accountability of learners.