Lesson 3

THE ROLES OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY IN LEARNING

“ Technology makes the world a new place”

Traditional role of technology:

·         Delivery vehicles for instructional lessons.

Traditional way:

·         Technology serve as a teacher.

Constructivist role:

·         Partners in the learning process.

·         Technology is a learning tool to learn with, not from.

From a constructivist perspective, the following are the roles of technology in learning: [Jonassen, et al 1990]

·         Learning to solve problems with technology.

Technology as tool 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 stimulating meaningful real-world problems, situations and context.

·         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 disscussing, arguing, and building consensus among members of community.

·         For supporting discourse among knowledge-building community.

Technology as intellectual partner (Jonassen1996) to support learning-by-reflecting:

·         For helping others to articulate and represent what they 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.