Lesson 3

Lesson 3

The Roles of Educational Technology in Learning

“Technology makes the world a new place”

Traditional role of technology:

ü  Delivery vehicles for instructional lessons.

Traditional way:

ü  Technology serves as a teacher.

Constructivist role:      

ü  Partners in the learning process.

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

From a constructivist perspective, the following are the roles of technology in learning:

ü  Learning to solve problems with technology.

Technology as tool to support knowledge construction:

ü  For representing learner’s ideas, understandings and beliefs.

ü  For producing organized, multimedia knowledge bases by learners.

Technology as information vehicles for exploring knowledge to support learning-by-constructing:

ü  For accessing needed information.

ü  For comparing perspectives, beliefs and world views.

Technology as context to support learning-by-doing:

ü  For representing and stimulating meaningful real-world problems, situations and context.

ü  For representing beliefs, perspectives, arguments and stories of others.

ü  For defining a safe, controllable problem space for student thinking.

Technology as a social medium to support learning-by-conversing:

ü  For collaborating with others.

ü  For discussing, arguing and building consensus among members of community.

ü  For supporting discourse among knowledge-building community.

Technology as intellectual partner to support learning-by-reflecting:

ü  For helping others to articulate and represent what they know.

ü  For reflecting on what they have learned and how they came to know it.

ü  For supporting learners internal negotiations and meaning making.

ü  For constructing personal representations of meaning for supporting mindful thinking.