✿ Basic Concept on Integrating Technology in Instruction ✿

Lesson 4

Integrating Technology in teaching means the use of technologies to introduce reinforce supplement and extend skills.

No Integrative Process–if for example teachers make the students play a computer games to give them a rest period during classes.

External Manifestation of Technology

●    There’s a change in the way classes are traditionally conducted.

●     The quality of instruction is improved to a higher level in such way that could not have been achieved without educational technology.

●     There is planning by the teacher on the process of determining how and when technology fits into the teaching learning process

●    The teacher sets instructional strategies to address specific instructional issues/problems.

●    The use of technology provides the opening to opportunities to respond to these instructional issues/problems.

●     In sum, technology occupies a position (is a simple or complex way) in the instructional process.

Levels of Integration

Simple/basic integration
In this example, there is no substantial change in the teaching-learning process from previous method. While technology helps, it does not play a pivotal role.
Ms. Cruz wants to show photos in her Social Studies class, but the pictures are small. She decides to use the computer, scan the photos for a computer projection to the class (a presentation Software package).	Result: Good class presentation followed by a discussion.

Middle Level Integration
There is purposeful use of technology to support the learning areas.
Geography teachers, Ms. Sioson fine it difficult to motivate her students to learn about other countries. Her supervisor suggested an instructional simulation software in which students plays detectives to solve mysteries related to Geography. Ms. Sioson used the computer-based material also designed worksheets and question-answer sheets to find out that students experience in the learning process.	Result: An exciting group learning activity.

In this example, Technology is the central instructional tool
To dish out information on the Asean   Region, Mr. Lopez assigned newsletter computer production by group.	Result: Increased social skills through group work planning, creativity, computer skills.

             To reflect, it may need time for teachers who are novices in technology integration to become adept technology instructional integrators. There is no need to worry since technology integration is developmental and takes a gradual route to mastery and expertise. In time, teachers can advance from basic to more complicated levels of technology use in instruction.

✿ State-of-the-Art ET Application Practices ✿

Lesson 5

Looking through progressive state policies that support technology-in-education, and other new developments in pedagogical practice, our educators today have become more aware and active in adopting state-of-the-art educational technology practices they can possibly adopt.

The following trends should also be recognized by educators:

●     Through school or training center computer courses, present-day students have become computer literate. They send e-mail, prepare computer encoded class reports, even make power-point presentation sometimes to the surprise of their media tradition-bound teachers.

●   Following the call for developing critical thinking among students, teachers have deemphasized rote learning and have spent more time in methods to allow students to comprehend/internalize lessons.

● Shifting focus from lower-level traditional learning outcomes, student assessment/examinations have included measurement of higher level learning outcomes such as creative and critical thinking skills.

● Recent teaching-learning models (such as constructivism and social constructivism) have paved the way for instructional approaches in which students rely less on teachers as information-givers, and instead more on their efforts to acquire information, build their own knowledge, and solve problems.

Virtue is in moderation and so, there is truly a need for teachers to balance their time to the preparation and application of instructional tools. Through wise technical advice, schools can also acquire the most appropriate computer hardware and software. At the same time, training should ensure that the use of ET is fitted to learning objectives. In addition, teachers should acquire computer skills for so that they can serve as models in integrating educational technology in the teaching-learning process.

       

FIGURE 1 – SYSTEMATIC INSTRUCTIONAL PLANNING PROCESS

Following modern trends in technology-related education, schools should now foster a student-centered learning environment, wherein students are given leeway to use computer information sources in their assignments, reports and presentation in written, visual, or dramatic forms.

All these suggestion show that teachers and schools can no longer avoid the integration of educational technology in instruction. Especially in the coming years, when portable and mobile computing will make computing activities easier to perform, the approaches to classroom pedagogy musts change. And with continuing changes in high-speed communication, mass storage of data, including the revolutionary changes among school libraries, educators should be open for more drastic educational changes in the years ahead.

✿ IT Enters A New Learning Environment ✿

Lesson 6

          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 Learning, Discovery learning, Generative Learning and Constructivism.

In 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.

Figure 2 – Conceptual Models of Learning

Meaningful Learning

              If the traditional learning environment gives stress focus to rote learning and simple memorization, meaningful learning gives focus to new experience departs from that is related to what the learners already knows. New experience departs 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 wiling 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 recognize 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. 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 student in a well-organized way, such as through a detailed set of instructions to complete an experiment task. To make a contrast, in discovery learning student from tasks to uncover what is to be learned.

New ideas and new decision are generated in the learning process, regardless of the need to move on and depart from organized setoff activities previously set. In discovery learning, it is important that the student 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 concept 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 generative learning, we have active learners who attend to learning events and generate meaning from this experience and draw inferences thereby creating a personal model or explanation to the new experience in the context of 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 pieces 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 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.

           To review, there are common themes to these four learning domains. They are given below:

Learners

●      are active, purposeful learners.

●      set personal goals and strategies to achieve these goals.

●      make their learning experience meaningful and relevant to their lives.

●   seek to build an understanding of their personal worlds so they can work/live productively.

●    build on what they already know in order to interpret and respond to new experiences.

✿ IT for Higher Thinking Skills and Creativity ✿

Lesson 7

 In the traditional information absorption model of teaching, the teacher organizes and presents information to students-learners. He may use a variety of teaching resources to support lesson such as chalkboard, videotape, newspaper or magazine and photos. The presentation is followed by discussion and the giving of assignment. Among the assignments may be a research on a given topic. This teaching approach has proven successful for achieving learning outcomes following the lower end of Bloom’s Taxonomy: knowledge, comprehension, and application are concerned.

            But a 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 the 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.

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.

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 old
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 outcomes, revising

                                             

                                         Figure 4 - Thinking Skills Framework

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 toolkits; 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.

            As a future teacher, we must take into consideration the process in every project because in the process, the students were able to think and apply their creativity as results they have develop their higher order thinking skills.

Four Types of I-T Based Projects

●Resource-based project

●Simple creations

●Guided hypermedia

●Web design project

✿ Higher Thinking Skills Through IT-Based Projects ✿

Lesson 8

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 is the fact that these projects differ on 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 projects, containing the key elements of a constructivist approach to instruction, namely:

(a)  the teacher creating the learning environment

(b)  the teacher giving students the tools and facilities, and

(c)   the teacher facilitating learning.

The students themselves who demonstrate higher thinking skills and creativity through such activities searching for information, organizing and synthesizing ideas, creating presentations, and the like.

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

            I.  Resources-based Projects

In these projects, the teacher steps out of the traditional role of being an content expert and information provider, and instead lets the students find their own facts and information. Only when necessary for the active learning process does the teacher step in to supply data or information. The general flow of events in resource-based projects are:

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

Relating to finding information, the central principle is to make the students go beyond the textbook and curriculum materials. Students are also encouraged to go to the library, particularly to the modern extension of the modern library, the internet.

The inquiry-based or discovery approach is given importance in resource-based projects. This requires that the students, individually or cooperatively with members of his group, relate gathered information to the ‘real world.’

The process is given more importance than the project product. It doesn’t matter for example if each group comes up with a different answer to the problem. What matters are the varied sources of information, the line of thinking and the ability to agree in defense of their answers.

The table below can provide the difference between the traditional and resources-based learning approach to instruction.

FIGURE 5 – TRADITIONAL & RESOURCE-BASED LEARNING MODELS

Traditional	Resource-based learning model
Teacher is expert and information provider	Teacher is a guide and facilitator
Textbook is key source of information	Sources are varied (print, video, internet, etc.)
Food on facts information is packaged, in neat parcels	Focus on learning inquiry/ quest/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

Students can also be assigned to create their software materials to supplement the need for relevant and effective materials. Of course, there are available software materials such Creative Writer (by Microsoft) on writing, KidWork Deluxe (by Davidson) on drawing and painting, and MediaWeave (by Humanities software) on multimedia.

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. Creativity is said to combine three kind of skills/abilities:

Analyzing – distinguishing similarities and differences, seeing the project as a problem to be solved.

Synthesizing – making spontaneous connections among ideas, their generating interesting or new ideas.

Promoting – selling of new ideas to allow the public to test the ideas themselves.

To develop creativity, the following five key tasks may be recommended:

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 idea exchange.

3.      Judge the ideas. The students themselves make an appraisal for or against any idea. Only when students are completely off track 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 in two different ways:

          1. As an instructive tool, such as in the production by students of a power-point presentation of a selected topic.

            2. As a constructivist tool, such as when students do a multimedia 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 webpages on a given topic. But creating webpages, even single page webpages, may be too sophisticated and time consuming for the average student.

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