Lesson 10

Demonstration in Teaching 

·         Demonstration is showing how a thing is done emphasizing the salient merits, utility and efficiency of concept, a method or a process or an attitude. It is a method of presentation of skill which shows a particular procedure is performed.

·         Demonstration increases interest of students and persuades them to adopt recommended practices. A good demonstrator is an audio-visual presentation. It is not enough that the teacher talks. To be effective, his/her demonstration must be accompanied by some visuals.

Guiding principles that we must observe in using demonstration as a teaching-learning experience: 

1.      Establish rapport, greet your audience

2.      Avoid the COIK fallacy (Clear Only If Known)

3.      Watch for key points

Planning and Preparing for Demonstration 

1. What are our objectives?
2. How does your class stand with respect to these objectives?
3. Is there a better way to achieve your ends?
4. Do you have access to all necessary materials and equipment to make the demonstration?
5. Are you familiar with the sequence and content of the proposed demonstration?
6. Are the time limits realistic?

Several points to observe in the actual conduct of demonstration: 

1. Set the tone for good communication.
2. Keep your demonstration simple.
3. Do not wander from the main ideas.
4. Check to see if your demonstration is being understood.
5. Do not hurry your demonstration.
6. Do not drag out your demonstration.
7. Conclude with a summary. 
8. Hand out written materials at the conclusion.

What questions can you ask to evaluate your classroom demonstration? 

1.      Was your demonstration adequately and skillfully prepared?

2.      Did you follow the step-by-step plan?

3.      Was the demonstration itself correct?

4.      Did you keep checking to see that all your students where concentrating on what you were doing?

5.      Could every person see and hear?

6.      Did you help students do their own generalizing?

7.      Did you take enough time to demonstrate the key points?

8.      Did you review and summarize the key points?

9.      Did your students participate in what you were doing by asking thoughtful questions at the appropriate time?

1.  Did your evaluation of student learning indicate that your demonstration achieved its purpose?

Lesson 9

Teaching with Dramatized Experiences

Dramatized experience is a process of communication in which both participants and spectators are engaged.

Here are the kinds of Dramatized Experience:

• Formal Plays - depict life, character, or culture or a combination of all three.
• Pageants - usually community dramas that are based on local history and presented by local actors.
• Pantomime - is the art of conveying a story through bodily movements only.
• Tableau - is a picture-like scene composed of people against a background.
• Puppets - unlike regular stage play, it can present ideas with extreme simplicity, without elaborating the scenery or costume yet effective.                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Types of puppets

1. Marionettes - are generally fashioned from wood and resemble a human body.

2. Shadow Puppets - similar to the marionette, but less sophisticated and are generally flat characters created from heavy paper or cardboard.

3. Stick Puppets - are simple as a styrofoam ball head attached to a stick, or a two-dimentional picture attached to a stick.

4. Hand Puppets - most common type of puppet which are relatively simple to create. 

5. Mouth Puppets - are distinguished from other puppets because they have movable mouths, thus allowing the puppet to talk more realistically.

6. Rod Puppets - these are flat cut out figures tacked to a stick with one or more movable parts, and operated from below the stage level by wire rods or slender sticks.

7. Glove and finger Puppets - make used of old gloves to which small costumed figures are attached.

Lesson 8

Teaching with Contrived Experiences

       Contrived experiences are "edited" copies of reality and are used as substitutes for real things when it is not practical or do the real thing in the class room. These are designed to simulate real-life situations. These include:

• Model - is a reproduction of a real thing in a small scale, or large scale or exact size.

• Mock Up - is an arrangement of real device or associated devices, displayed in such a way that representation of reality is created.

• Specimen - is any individual or item considered typically of a group, class or whole.

• Objects - may also include artifacts displayed in a museum or objects displayed in exhibits or preserved insect's specimen in science.

• Simulation - is a representation of manageable real event in which the learner is active participants engage in learning a behavior in or in applying previously acquired skills or knowledge.

• Games - these are played to win.

We  make use of contrived experiences:

• To overcome limitation of space and time.
• To edit reality for us to be able to focus on parts or a process of a system that we intend to study.
• To overcome difficulties of size.
• To understand the inaccessible, and
• To help the learners understand abstraction.

Lesson 7

"Direct Purposeful Experiences and Beyond"

       Direct experiences are first hand experiences that serve as the foundation of learning. Direct experiences are basically what the students learn by doing it. This way of teaching is known to be the most effective way of teaching the students because experiences are the best teacher.

         In contrast, indirect experiences are experiences of others; people that we observe, read or hear about. They are not our own self-experiences but still experiences on the sense that we see, read, and hear about them. They are not first hand but vicarious experiences.

Some examples of direct experiences are:

• preparing meals
• doing power point presentations
• delivering a speech
• etc.

     These experiences are described to be purposeful because they are experiences that are internalized in the sense that these experiences involve asking of questions that have significance i  the life of the person undergoing the direct experience.

Lesson 6

Using and Evaluating Instructional Materials

 Here are the guidelines in selecting  for effective use of instructional materials. It must:

• Give a true picture of the ideas they present
• Contribute to the attainment of the learning objective
• Be appropriate to the age, intelligence and experience of the learners.
• Be in good and satisfactory condition
• Provide foe teacher's guide
• Help develop the critical and creative thinking power of students
• Be worth the time, expense and effort involved
• For the better use of IM the teacher is necessary to prepare herself, her students, and the IM.

THE PROPER USE OF MATERIALS:

To ensure effective use of instructional materials, Hayden Smith and Thomas Nagel, book authors on instructional media advice us to abide by the acronym PPPF.

1. P-repare yourself
2. P-repare your Student
3. P-resent the Material
4. F-ollow up

Lesson 5

Lesson 5

The Cone of Experience

Professor Dale’s most famous concept was called “Cone of Experience”, it is a graphic depiction of the relationship between how information is presented in instruction and the outcomes for learners. The Cone of Experience is a visual model, a pictorial device that presents bands of experience arranged according to degree of abstraction and not degree of difficulty. The farther you go from the bottom of the cone, the more abstract the experience becomes.

What are these bands of experience in Dale’s Cone of Experience? Let us expound each of them starting with the most direct. First we have direct purposeful experiences; these are first hand experiences which serve as the foundation of our learning.  We build up our storage of meaningful information and ideas through seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. Second is contrived experiences; in here, we make use of a model or mock-ups of reality for practical reasons and so that we can make the real-life accessible to the students’ perceptions and understanding. Then we have dramatized experiences; these are reconstructed experiences of an event or happenings and even personal experiences by acting it personally.  Another is demonstrations; these are visualized explanation of an important fact, idea or processes by the use of photographs, drawings, films, displays, or guided motions. We also have study trips; these are excursions, educational trips, and visits conducted to observe an event that is unavailable within the classroom. Then we have exhibits; these are displays to be seen by spectators and they consist of models arranged meaningfully or photographs with models, charts and posters. Next is television and motion pictures; these can reconstruct the reality of the past so effectively that we are made to feel we are there. Still pictures, recordings, and radio; these are visual and auditory devices which may be used by an individual or a group. Still pictures lack the sound and motion of a sound film. The radio broadcast an actual event may often be likened to a televised broadcast minus its visual dimension. We have visual symbols; these are no longer realistic reproduction of physical things for these are highly abstract representations like charts, graphs, maps, and diagrams. Lastly we have verbal symbol; they are not like the objects or ideas for which they stand. They usually do not contain visual clues to their meaning.

The Three-tiered Model of Learning are the implications of the cone of experience in the teaching-learning process. It is also a model that illustrates that every area of knowledge can be presented and learned in three distinct steps.

Jerome Bruner identified three stages of cognitive representation.

1. Enactive, which is the representation of knowledge through actions.
2. Iconic, which is the visual summarization of images.
3. Symbolic representation, which is the use of words and other symbols to describe experiences.

The enactive stage appears first. This stage involves the encoding and storage of information. There is a direct manipulation of objects without any internal representation of the objects.

The iconic stage appears from one to six years old. This stage involves an internal representation of external objects visually in the form of a mental image or icon.

The symbolic stage, from seven years and up, is when information is stored in the form of a code or symbol such as language. Each symbol has a fixed relation to something it represents.

Lesson 4

Lesson 4

                                        Systematic Approach to Learning

         The systematic approach views the entire educational program as a system of closely interrelated parts. It is an organized learning pattern with all parts harmoniously integrated into the whole: the school, the teacher, the students, the objectives, the media, the materials, the assessment tools and procedures. The main focus of this systematic learning is the student.

         Here are the procedures in planning the flow of your teaching strategy. First, define your objectives because instruction begins with definition of instructional objectives to consider your students’ needs, interests and readiness. Second, choose appropriate methods because when you already knew your objectives you know what method is to be used with them that would best fit their interests. Third, choose appropriate experiences, for your students to understand well the lesson that you are discussing with, it is better to site some examples to them which are accurately related with the topic. Fourth, select materials, equipment and facilities because it is important to have these three for you to catch their attention and interest also for them to be comfortable and convenient. Fifth, assign personnel role, in case of you are not capable or you were not trained well for operating specific equipment, you must assign somebody who knows how to operate it. Sixth, implement the instruction, once everything is in order or it is all prepared, then start your discussion with your chosen teaching method. Seventh, evaluate outcomes, right after you have discussed your lesson, you have to know if your students understand it or observe the results if your method and presentation are effective or not.  And lastly, refine the process, if your objective was attained and if your method was effective therefore, you can proceed with the next lesson and apply it again. 

Lesson 3

Lesson 3

The roles of Educational Technology in Learning

Technology makes the world a better place. In the traditional role of technology, it serves as a delivery vehicle for instructional lessons, while in the traditional way, technology serves as a teacher.  Its constructive role is to make technology a partner in the learning process. Also, technology is a learning tool to learn with, not from. Aside from its constructive role, it also has other roles in learning according to a constructive perception and they are as follows: Technology as a tool to support knowledge construction. It is for representing learners’ ideas, understandings and beliefs. Technology as information vehicles for exploring knowledge to support learning-by-constructing. It is for accessing needed information and comparing perspectives, beliefs and world views. Technology as a context to support learning-by-doing. It is for it is for representing and stimulating meaningful real-world problems, situations and context or the representation of beliefs, arguments and stories of others. Technology as a social medium to support learning by conversing. It is for the collaboration with others or discussion, arguments and building consensus among members of the community. It is also for supporting discourse among knowledge-building community. Technology as intellectual partner to support learning by reflecting. It is for helping others to articulate and represent what they know also, for reflecting on what they have learned and how they came to know it. Another is for supporting learner’s internal negotiations and meaning making and it is for constructing personal representations of meaning for supporting mindful thinking.

Lesson 2

Lesson 2

Technology: Boon or Bane?

Technology is a blessing for man because with the use of technology, we can do a lot of things which we could not do then in an easy way. It contributes much to the improvement of the teaching-learning process and to the humanization of life. For example, with television, we can watch events as they happen all over the globe. By using computer, specifically using multimedia in the classroom, it can improve the efficiency of the teacher in teaching through the use of special effects and catchy presentations. Another advantage of technology is that we can communicate now much better through the use of our webcams and cell phones wherein it could also save other people lives because of speedy notifications. There are a lot of reasons why technology is boon. Those are just some of the reasons that prove technology has a lot of benefits to us. 

Technology has also bad effects especially if we do not use it correctly. It becomes a detriment to learning and development of a person. It can destruct, destroy and worst, it can kill us. Some examples of its bad effects are when you use it to search for pornographic images and videos, when we become dependent to it and make us unproductive and worthless. Another bad thing that can do with technology is that we can make character assassination to other people by using social media through the use of internet. Also, we spend most of our time in using our gadgets even in school and in our workplace. There are also a lot of disadvantages if we use technology because technology itself is broad and universal that’s why everything is possible. But it still depends to us how we are going to use it.

Lesson 1

Lesson 1

Meaning of Educational Technology

It is the application of technology in the educative process or the teaching-learning process that takes place in educational institutions.

What are the differences of Technology in Education, Instructional Technology and Technology Integration with each other?

Technology in Education is the application of technology in the operation of the educational institution. For example, the billing process, enrollment process, ID system, etc. Instructional Technology then, refers to aspects of Educational Technology that are concerned with instructions like, projectors, laptops, LED monitors, tablets and cell phones, and anything that can be used for instructing the learners. And Technology Integration is the use of learned technologies to introduce, supplement and extend the skills of the learners. One example for this is the use of computer in schools by the students.

There are benefits in using Educational Technology. It increases the quality of learning and the degree of its mastery through the use of special effects of unique programming that are considered individualized, valid and accessible. It also decreases the time spent in instruction for learners to achieve desired learning objectives. It increases efficiency of teachers. And it reduces educational cost without affecting the quality of instruction. Those are the benefits that we could get from Educational Technology.

Here are guidelines in using Educational Technology for learners to understand and relate with the topics that are being taught by the speaker. You have to determine the purpose for which the instructional materials are to be used. Define the objectives to determine the appropriateness of the material. Also, exercise flexibility so that the materials satisfy different purposes. You must consider diversity or variety of materials. You should relate the materials to age, ability, maturity and interest of the students. You should also arrange the conditions so that the materials do not interrupt the momentum of the lesson and prepare the students for what they will see, hear and do as lessons unfold. Another, you must know how to operate equipment needed for efficient use. You should summarize the experiences gained and follow up with further relevant discussion. And lastly, you must evaluate the results of the used materials as well as your method of teaching to determine effectiveness.

The most commonly used media or materials for instruction are the following: Print Media which is considered to be the most dominant and the primary means of communicating subject matter. Some examples are books, textbooks and periodicals. Another is Pictures and Graphics which are useful means of expressing ideas. Some examples are pictures, graphics, visual display devices and projection devices. We also have Sound Recordings and Radio like phonograph records, audiotapes, compact disc and radio itself. Film and Television is also used. Video Recordings like videotapes and discs, cables and satellites and camcorder. Computer-based Learning (CBL) is also used which enables students to study almost anytime in convenient locations and with varying ability levels by using computer software. Lastly the Web, it is widely used nowadays because it’s easy and helpful in terms of getting information. We have Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia for some examples.

There are criteria in selecting instructional materials. First the appropriateness, materials must catch the general and specific objectives of the lesson and you must also consider the difficulty of the concepts taught, the vocabulary level of the students, the methods used in teaching and the interest of your learners. Second the authenticity, materials must be accurate, up to date and reliable with information. Third is interest and appeal to users, materials must have the power to catch the interest of users. Fourth is organization and balance, materials must be very clear, well-organized and logically sequenced. Fifth is cost effectiveness or economy, materials used must be relative to the cost of other similar materials, their durability and the number of student users. And lastly the breadth, the scope of materials must suit to different types of learners and learning purposes.

There are also Ten Commandments in creating learning materials aside from the commandments written in the Bible.  The first one is, do not overcrowd. When you are making visual presentation make sure that it is visible to all. Second, be consistent in format, layout and convention. What format and layout or design you used from the start must be similar or related until the end. Third, use appropriate typefaces or point uses. Use what appropriate font size and font style is needed. Fourth, use bold and italics for emphasis but do not overused them. Use them only if necessary. Fifth, use titles, headings and subheadings to clarify and guide. This will help the learners to know and help them follow the discussion. Sixth, use numbers to direct through sequences. Use numbers to determine the arrangement. Seventh, use graphics and illustrations to reinforce ideas. Pictures and graphics can help the learners to understand the main purpose and idea. Eighth, use symbols and icons as identifying markers. Just like pictures, symbols can be used also to help the learner determine what the speaker wants to portray. Ninth, use color/video/audio/music to stimulate but not to overpower the senses. This will help to catch the attention of the learners and this will put some interest and excitement in the lesson. And tenth, produce the materials with technical excellence, good quality, good audio, clear, etc.  Check the materials before using it and make sure that it is in good condition.