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.