IT Enters a New 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, discovery, generative learning, and constructivism.

          In these conceptual models, we shall see how effective teacher’s best interact with students in innovative learning activities, while integrating technology to the teaching learning process.

          Meaningful learning

          If the traditional learning environment gives stress focus to route learning and simple memorization, meaningful learning gives focus to new experience departs from that is related to what the learners already knows. New experiences depart from the learning of a sequence of words but attention to 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 already know and what they can learn.

In the learning process, the learner is encouraged to recognized 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.

Discovery Learning

It was differentiated from reception learning in which ideas are presented directly to students in a well-organized way, such as through a detailed set of instructions to complete an experiment task.

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

In applying technology, the computer can present a tutorial process by which the learner is presented key concepts and the rules of learning in a direct manner for receptive learning. But, the computer has other uses rather than delivering tutorials. In a computer simulation process, for example, the learner himself is made to identify key concept by interacting with a responsive virtual environment.

Generative Learning

In this, we have active learners who attend to learning events and generate meaning from these experiences and draw inferences thereby creating a personal model or explanation to the new experience in the context of existing knowledge.

It was viewed 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 GL gives emphasis to what can be done with pieces of information, not only on access to them.

Constructivism

In constructivism, the learner’s builds a personal understanding through appropriate learning activities and a good learning environment.

The most accepted principles of 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.

These two principles in turn lead to three practical implications:

·         The learner is directly responsible for learning. He creates 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” his school activity with real life.

·         The purpose of education is the acquisition of practical and personal knowledge, not abstract or universal truths.

ISSUES:

Is constructivism more important to recognize, in terms of practice rather than generative learning?

REFLECTIONS:

   

    Constructivism paved much of recognition, whether dealing to the stereotype setting in a classroom, even to this day, that technology was an integral curriculum being practice in a classroom. It was an innate learning or a given fact that “everybody, loves to talk about themselves”. The idea of imparting the applications derived from their own experiences best delivered when you are actually giving direct response or reaction coming from your experience and learning.