Lesson 3

The Roles of Educational Technology in Learning

“Technology makes the world a new place”

Traditional role of technology:

•    Delivery vehicles for instructional lessons.

Traditional way:

• Technology serve as a teacher.

Constructivist role:

• Partners in the learning process.
• Technology is a learning tool to learn with, not from.

From a constructivist perspective, the following are the roles of technology in learning: [ Jonassen, et al 1990]

•  Learning to solve problems with technology.

1. Technology as tool to support knowledge construction:

•  For representing learners’ ideas, understandings and beliefs.
•  For producing organized, multimedia knowledge bases by learners.

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

• For accessing needed  information.
•  For comparing perspectives, beliefs and world views.

3. Technology s context to support learning-by-doing:

• For representing and stimulating meaningful real-world problems, situations and context.
• For representing beliefs, perspectives, arguments and stories of others.
• For defining a safe, controllable problem space for student thinking.

4. Technology as a social medium to support learning by conversing:

• For collaborating with others
• For discussing, arguing, and building consensus among members of community.
• For supporting discourse among knowledge-building community.

5. Technology as intellectual partner (Jonassen 1996) to support learning-by-reflecting:

•   For helping others to articulate and represent what they know.
•   For reflecting on what they have learned and how they came to know it.
•   For supporting learners internal negotiations and meaning making.
•  For constructing personal representations of meaning for supporting mindful thinking.

Whether used from the traditional or constructivist point of view, when used effectively, research indicates that technology not only "increases students' learning, understanding and achievement but also augments motivation to learn, encourages collaborative learning and supports the development of critical thinking and problem solving skills" (Schacter and Fagnano, 1999).