Lesson 11: Computer as the Teachers Tool

Content

        Constructivism was introduced by Jean Piaget (1981) and Bruner (1990). They gave stress to knowledge discovery of new meaning/concepts/principles in the learning process. Various strategies have been suggested to foster knowledge discovery, among these, is making students engaged in gathering unorganized information from which they can induce ideas and principles. Students are also asked to apply discovered knowledge to new situations, a process for making their knowledge applicable to real life situations.

While knowledge is constructed by the individual learner in constructivism, knowledge can also be socially constructed. Social Constructivism is the effort to show that the construction of knowledge is governed by social, historical and cultural contexts. In effect, this is to say that the learner who interprets knowledge has a predetermined point of view according to the social perspectives of the community or society he lives in.

The psychologist Vygotsky stressed that learning is affected by social influences. He suggested the interactive process in learning. A more capable adult (teacher or parent) can aid or complement what the learner sees in a given tasks or project. In addition, John Dewey sees language as medium for social coordination and adaptation. For Dewey, human learning is really human languag
ing that occurs when students socially share, build and agree upon meanings and knowledge.

The Computer’s Capabilities

Informative Tool

The computer can provide vast amounts of information in various forms, such as text, graphics, sound, and video. Even multimedia encyclopedias are today available on the internet.

Communication Tool

The computer has been used in communication as evident by social networking sites as to facebook, twitter and friendster. We can even chat/talk friends and families anywhere in the globe through yahoo messenger or the one in facebook or view them through the webcam. We can send messages and information through the internet in just seconds or minutes.

Constructive Tool

The computer itself can be used for manipulating information, visualizing one’s understanding, and building new knowledge. The Microsoft Word computer program itself is a desktop publishing software that allows users to organize and present their ideas in attractive formats.

Co-constructive Tool

Students can use constructive tools to work cooperatively and construct a shared understanding of new knowledge. One way of co-construction is the use of the electronic whiteboard where students may post notices to a shared document/whiteboard. Students may also co-edit the same document from their homes.

Situating Tool

By means of virtual reality (RS) extension systems, the computer can create 3-D images on display to give the user the feeling that are situated in a virtual environment. A flight simulation program is an example of a situating tool which places the user in simulated flying environment.


Experiences

As far as I remember, the first time I observed a teacher using computer as a tool, was when I was on the first year of high school. He was using a projector and let us watched a video related to our topic that was about the outer space. I was really amazed when he showed it to us since it was my first time to experience it. I remembered that all of us are very attentive since we were really enjoying watching it. It’s just showed that we were all enjoyed to what we have experienced during that time. And because of that tool (the computer and the projector) used by our teacher, we would be able to understand fully during that time what is the life of the man on the outer space and its implication to us here inside the earth. Computer is infrequently used in my high school years by my teachers as a tool but I was exposed really on it when I was on college and this is the time when I really observed the teacher who used computer as a tool in teaching and learning process.

Reflection

Based on the experiences and the things that I have learned, I realized that it should be a must that we should always know how to apply things to other, we must know how to integrate things and to reflect on the things that we are doing. The experiences that we have and all the lessons that we have been through have different kinds of impact to us if we just reflect on it and think about it deeply, we have differences on some other things, we can view things differently, but still, we can make connections out from these differences to have a good solution and an effective factor that can maybe contribute to what is our prior idea or knowledge that could answer the questions in our mind and to our future student. I also realized that the teacher should be skilled enough not just on the manipulation of computer but also on application of these computers and other technologies to teaching and learning process to have a better understanding on lessons.

Application

I can apply this topic to the future student that I may have, just like on the above statements, I should integrate the topics that I have to the technology available but also considering other factors like interest of the student, year level, and etc. we could really apply it in the future if in the first place we could teach and the resources are all available, not unless we could provide our own materials with regards to this.