TEACHING MEDIA – CHAPTER 2 TECHNOLOGIES FOR LEARNING

TEACHING MEDIA – CHAPTER 2

TECHNOLOGIES FOR LEARNING

WHAT ARE TECHNOLOGIES FOR LEARNING?
We define technologies for learning as specific teaching learning patterns that serve reliably as templates for achieving demonstrably effective learning.
Technologies for learning combat boredom by providing a change of pace from lecture and seatwork and by adding motivational features that excite learner interest

COOPERATIVE LEARNING
Involves small heterogenous groups of student working together to achieve a common academic goal or task while working together to learn colaboration and social skills.
Advantages:
Active learning. It requires students to actively interact with others.
Social skill. Students learn to interact with others developing their interpersonal, communication, leadership, compromise, and collaboration skills.
Interdependence are developed as students interact to teach a common goal.
Individual accountability. Indivuals learn to be accountable for their actions.
Limitations:
Student compatibility. It’s sometime difficult to form groups of students who will work together well. The teacher must know her students well to form groups that will function effectively.
Student dependency. You may create dependency and defeat the purpose of cooperative learning. The challange is to devise management systems that require learner to truly collaborative.
Time consuming. It requires more time to cover the same amount of content than do some other methods.
Logistical obstacles. The teacher must arrange a lot of information, student responsibilities, and assesment activities.
Integration:
Students can learn cooperatively not only by being taught with materials but also by prodecing materials themselves. Ex/ produce a videotape or powerpoint presentation related to historical content being studied.
The notion of students wrorking together in small groups is not new, but ensuring that their efforts are truly collaborative has recently become a point of emphasis. Ex/ make a project tim to prepare a report on Peru.

Learning Together Model
Four basic elements:
Positive interdependence. Student must recognize that all the members of the group are dependent on each other to reach success. The teacher creates positive goal intedependence by requiring teammates to agree on objectives, strucures role intedependence by assigning each student a role.
Face to face helping interaction. The learner teach each other and discuss any confusion or misconception.
Individual accontability. It’s to randomly select one student’s test to represent the whole group to reinforce individual accountability.
Teaching interpersonal and small groups skill. They must be taught the skills of communication, leadership, and conflict management and must learn to monitor the processes in their group, making connections if there are shortcomings.

Team-Assisted Individualization (TAI)
Specifically intended to avoid some of the problems encountered with individualized programmed instructions.
TAI follows this pattern:
Teaching groups. The Teacher gives short lessons to small homogenous group –learner who are at about the same point in the curriculum. It prepare students for major concepts in upcoming units.
Team formation. Every eight weeks, student are asssigned to four member teams that are as heterogenous as possible in terms of acheivement levels, gender, and ethnic bacground.
Self-instructional materials. Student work independently using self-instructional materials, which include step by step procedures for solving problems, a set of problems, self-test items, and a summative test.
Team study. Student work in pairs within their assigned team, working on problems and having their partner check their solutions.
Team scores and team recognition. Team scores are computed at the end of each week; certificates are given to those who greatly exceed the criterion level.

Computer-Based Cooperative Learning
Computer assistance can alleviate some of the logistical obstacles to using cooperative learning methods, particulary the task of managing information, allocationg different individual responsibilities, presenting and monitoring instructional material, analyzing learner responses, administering tests, scoring and providing remediation for those tests.
Group oriented programs of this sprt can also deal with the logistical problems of assisting a number of groups simultaneously, as is necessary in the single computer classroom. The software manages a rotation of the teams so that there is the little tome lost waiting in line.

GAMES
An activity in which participants follow prescribed rules that differ from those of real life as they strive to attain a challenging goal.
Advantages:
Attractive. It provide attractive frameworks for learning activities because they are fun. Children and adults alike tend to react positively to an invitation to play..
Novel. As a departure from normal classroom routine, games arouse interest because of their novelty.
Atmosphere. It relaxed atmosphere fostered by games can be especially helpful for those who avoid other types of structured learning activities.
Time on task. It can keep learners interested in repetitious tasks, such as memorizing multiplication tables.
Limitations:
Competition. Competitive activities can be counter-productive for students who are less interested in competing or who are weak in the content or skill being practiced.
Distraction. Student can get caught up in the excitement of play and fail to focus on the real objectives.
Poor design. A fatal shortcoming of poorly designed games is that players spend a large portion of their time waiting for their turn, throwing dice,moving markers, around a board, and performing similar trivial actions.
Integration:
Attainment of cognitive objectives, particularly those involving recognition, dicrimination, or memorization.
Adding motivation to topics that ordinarily attract little student interst.
Small group instructio, providing structured activities that student or trainees can conduct by themselves without close instructor supervision.
Basic skills such as sequence, sense of directions, visual perceptions, number concept, and following rules which can be developed by means of card games.
Vocabulary building. Various commercial games have been used succesfully by teachers to expand spelling and vocabulary skills.

Adapting The Content Of Instructional Games
Here are some sample adaptations:
Safety tic-tac-toe. Use a three by three grid, each row represents a place where safety rules pertain to home, school and street. Team take turns selecting and trying to answer safety related question, attempting to fill in three squares in a row.
Spelling rummy. Using alphabet cards instead of regular playing cards, players attempt to spell short words following the general rules of rummy.
Reading concentration. This game using about a dozen matched picture-word pairs of flashcards. Cards are placed face down, on each turn the player turns over two card, seeking to match a pair.
Word bingo. Each player’s card has a five by five grid with a vocabulary word in each square. The reader randomly select words, players thn seek the words on their boards, and if they are found, the square is marked.

SIMULATIOS
An abstraction or simplication of some real-life situation or process. Participant usually play a role that involves them in interactions with other people or with elements of the simulated environment.

Simulation and Problem-Based Learning
In this learning, the learners is led toward understanding principles through grappling with a problem situation.

Simulators
The device employed to represent a physical system in a scaled-down form.
Advantages:
Realistic. They allow practice of real world skills under conditions similar to those in real life.
Safe. Learners can practice risky activities, ex/ cardiopulmonary resusciation without risking injury to themselves or to others.
Simplified. It intended to capture the essential features of a situation without dwelling on details that might be distracting or too complex for the learner’s current level of understanding.
Limitations:
Time consuming.  it are often used with problem based learning methods, allowing learners to immerse themselves in a problematic situation and to experiment with different approaches.
Oversimplications. Learner should take place in fully realistic situations, with all the complexity of real life. They would be concerned that a stimulation might give students a false understanding of tje real life situation.
Integration:
Training in motor skills, inscluding athletic and mechanical skills, and complex skills that might  otherwise be too hazardous or expensive in real life settings.
Instruction in social istruction and human relation, where displaying empahty and coping the reactions of other people are major goals.
Development of decision making skills ex/ microteaching in teacher education, mock court in law school, management simulations in bussiness administration.

Role Plays
Refers to a type of stimulation in which the dominant feature is relatively open-ended interaction among people. The purpose in many cases is to allow the person’s own traits to emerge so that they can be discussed and possibly modified.

SIMULATION GAMES
A simulation game combines the attributes of a simulation with the attributes of a game. Participation in simulation games, players can see the whole process and its dynamic interrelationships in action.
Integration: a simulation games require both the repetitive skill practice associated with games and the reality context associated with simulations. The teacher frequently use it to provide an overview of a large, dynamic process.

LEARNING CENTERS
A self contained environment designed to promote individual or small group learning around a specific tasks. It may be as simple as a table and some chairs around which student discuss, or it may be as sophisticated as several networked computers used by a group for collaborative research and problem solving.
Advantages:
Self-pacing. Centers encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning and allow them to learn at their own pace, thus minimizing the possibility of failure and maximizing the likelihood of success.
Active learning. It provide for student participation in the learning experience, student responses, immediate feedback to student response.
Teacher role. It allow the teacher to play more of a coaching role, moving around the classroom and providing individual help to students when they need it.
Limitations:
Cost. A great deal of time must be spent in planning and setting up center around in collecting and arranging for center materials.
Management. Teacher who manage it must be very good at classroom organization and management.
Student responsibility. Independent student will be successful only insofar as students are able and willing to accept resposibility  for their own learning.
Student isolation. It need not be limited to individual student use; small groups can be assigned to work together. If student do work alone, you must make other provitions to provide for the social dimension of learning.
Integration:
Skill centers. It can provide students with an opportunity to do additional practice, typically to reinforce  a lesson previously taught through other media or methods.
Interest centers. It can stimulate new intersest and encourage creativity.
Remedial centers. It can help students who need additional assistance with a particular concept or skill.
Enrichment centers. It can provide stimulating additional learning experiences for students who have completed other classroon activities.

PROGRAMMED INSTRUCTION
Programmed instruction is a method of presenting new subject matters to students in a graded sequence of controlled steps. Students work through the programmed material by themselves at their own speed and after each step test their comprehension by answering an examination question or filling in a diagram. They are then immediately shown the correct answer or given additional information. Computers and other types of teaching machines are often used to present the material, although books may also be used.
Advantages:
Self-pacing
Practice and feedback
Reliable
Effective
 Limitations:
Program design
Tedious
Lack of social interaction
Integration:
Programmed instruction is particularly useful as an enrichment activity. It can help provide highly motivated student with additional learning experiences that the teacher might ordinarily be unable to provide because of classroom time pressure.

PROGRAMMED TUTORING
Programmed tutoring is a one to one method of instruction in which the tutor’s responses are programmed in advance in the form of carefully structured printed instruction. in typical program the tutor and student go through the lesson material together
Advantages:
Self-pacing
Practice and feedback
Reliable
Effective
Limitations:
Labor intensive
Development cost
Integration:
Reading and mathematics have been by far the most popular subjects for tutoring. Being basic skills and highly structured by nature, these subjects lend themselves well to this approach. Remedial instruction is the typical application of tutoring program.

PROGRAMMED TEACHING
Programmed teaching is an attempt to apply the principles of programmed instruction in a large group setting.
Advantages:
Self-pacing
Mastery
Effective
Limitations:
Development cost
Behaviorist commitment
Self-discipline
Integration:
In secondary education it has been most successful in mathematics, engineering and psychology and slightly less successful in the life sciences and social sciences.