LESSON 3

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 learners’ ideas, understanding 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 perspective, 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 discussing, 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.