Teaching Media Chapter 1

MEDIA, TECHNOLOGY, AND LEARNING

            The rules of instructor and learner are clearly changing because of the influence of media and technoogy in classroom. No longer are teachers and textbooks the sources of all knowledge. Teacher becomes the director of the knpwledge-access process. Along the continuum of instructional strategies, sometimes the teacher will elect to provide direcr instructional experiences for students. At other times, with a few keystrokes students can explore the world, gaining access to libraries, other teachers and students, and a host of resources to obtain the knowledge they seek.

Learning

Learning is the development of new knowledge, skills, or attitudes as an individual interacts with information and the environment. The learning environment includes the physical facilites, the psychological atmosphere, instructional methods, media, and technology.

Psychological Perspectives on Learning

Learning theories and their impact on teaching decisions are discussed in greater detail by Driscoll (1994).

• Behaviorist Perspective.

In the mid 1950s, the focus of learning research strated to shift from stimulus design (communication) to learner response to stimuli. At the forefront of this movement was B.F. Skinner, a psychologist at Harvard University.

• Cognitivist Perspecrive.

Cognitivist, on the other hand, are making a primary contribution to learning theory and instrutional design by creating models of how learners receive, process, and manipulate information. Cognitivism leads to a different way of looking at familiar learning patterns. For example, behaviorists simply state that pracctice strengthens the response to a stimulus. Cognitivists create a mental model of short-term and long-term memory.

The three key concepts of mental development in Piaget’s work the schemata, assimilation, and accommodotaion (Piaget, 1977)

• ·         Schemata are the mental structures by which individuals organize their perceived environment. Schemata are adapted or changed during mental development and learning.
• ·         Assimilation is the cognitive process by which a learner intergrates new information and experiences into existing schemata.
• ·         Accomodation is the process of modifying existing schemata or creating new ones is called accommodation.
•       Constructivist Perspective.

Constructivism is a movement that extends beyond the beliefs of the cognitivist. It considers the engagement of students in meaningful experiences as the essence of learning.

• Social-Psychological Perspective.

Social psychology is another well-established tradition in the study of insttruction and learning. Social psychologists look at the effects of the social organization of the classroom on learning.

• Approaches to Instruction.

Instruction is the arrangement of informantion and environment to facilitate learning. By environment we mean not only where instruction takes place but also the methods, media, and technology needed to convey information and guide the learner’s study.

Instructors and instructional designers need to develop an eclectric attitude toward competing school of learning psychology. We are not obliged to swear allegiance to a particular learning theory. We use what works. If we find that a particular learning situation is suited ti a behaviorist approach, then we use behaviorist techniques. Conversely, if the situation seems to call for cognitivist or constructivist methods, that is what we use.

• Finding a Middle Ground.

Successful instructional practices have features that are supported by virually all the various perspectives:

• ·         Active participation
•             Practive
• ·         Individual differences
• ·         Feedback
• ·         Realistic contexts
• ·         Social interaction

•      A Philosophical Perspective on Learning.

More that a few observers have argued that the wide-spread use of instructional hardware in the classroom leads to treating students as if they were machines rather than human beings—that is, that techonology dehumanizes the teaching/learning process.

Media

A medium is a channel of communication. Derived from the Latin word meaning “between”, the term refers to anything that carries information between a source and a receiver. Examples include video, television, diagrams, printed materials, computers, and instructors. These are considered instructional media when they carry messages with an instructional purpose. The purpose of media is to facilitate communication.

• The Concrete-Abstract Continuum.

Instructional media that incorporate concrete experiences help students integrate prior experience and thus facilitat learning of absract concepts. For example, many students have watched various aspects of the construction of a highway or street.

In general, as you move up Dale’s Cone of Experience toward the more abstract media, more information can be compressed into a shorter period of time. It takes more time for students to engage in a direct purposeful experience, a contrived experience, or a dramatized experience that it dows not to present the same information in a videotape, a recording, a series of visual symbols, or a series of verbal symbols.

The Roles of Media in Learning

Media can serve many roles in learning. The instruction may be ddependent on the presence of a teacher. Even in this situation, media may be heavily used by the teacher. On the other hand, the instruction may not require a teacher. Such student-directed instruction is often called “self-instruction” even though it is in fact guided by whoever designed the media.

• Instrutor-Directed Instruction.

The most common use of media in an instructional situation is for supplemental, support of the “live” instructor in the classroom. Certainly, properly designed instructional media can enhance and promote learning and support teacher-based instruction. But their effectiveness depends on the instrutor.

• Instructor-Independent Instruction.

Media are often “packaged” for this purpose: objectives are listed, guidance in achieving objectives is given, materials are assembled, and self-evaluation guidelines are provided. In informal educational settings, media such as videocaspsettes and computer couseware can be used by trainees at the worksite or at home. In some instances an insttructor may be available for consultation via telephone.

The use of self-instructional materials allows teacher to spend more of their time diagnosing and correcting student problems, consulting with individual students, and teaching one on one and in small groups.

• Media Portfolios.

A portfolio is a collection of student work that illustrates growth over a period of time. Portfolios often include such artifacts as student-produced illustrated books, videos, and audiovisual presentation.

Portfolios allow students to the following:

• ·         Gather, organize, and share information
• ·         Analyze relationships
• ·         Test hypotheses
• ·         Communicate the results effectively
• ·         Record a variety of performances
• ·         Reflect on their learning and activities
• ·         Emphasize their goals, outcomes, and priorities
• ·         Demostrate their creativity and personality

Portfolios could contain the following artifacts:

• ·         Written documents such as poems, stories, or research papers
• ·         Media presnetations, such as slide sets or photo essays
• ·         Audio recordings of debates, panel discussions, or oral presentations
• ·         Video recordings of syudents’ athletic, musical, or dancing skills
• ·         Computer multimedia projects incorporating print, data, graphics, and moving images

·         Electorinic Portfolios.

The use of computer workstations with video and audio digitizing cards, printers, scanners, and digital cameras allow students to product electronic of digital portfolio.

• Thematic Instruction

Many teachers are now organizing their instruction around themes of achors. Elementary teachers in particulaar are integrating content and skills for many subjects. At the secondary level, teams of teachers from different contecnt areas are working together to show the overlap of their course content.

• Distance Education

Distance education is a rapidly developing approach to instruction wordwide. The approach has been widely used by business, industrial, and medical organizations. For may years doctors, veterinarians, pharmacist, engineers, and lawyers have used it to continue their professional education.

• Education for Exceptional Students

Media play an important role in the education of students with exceptionalities. Adapted and specially designed media can contribute enormously to effective instruction of all students and can help them achieve at their highest potential regardless of their innate abilities.

Methods

Methods are the procedures of instruction slected to help learners achieve the objectives or to internalize the content or message.

• Ten Method Categories

The general categories of methods are presentation, demonstration, discussion, drill and practice, tutorial, cooperative learning, gaming, simulation, discovery and problem solving.

• ·         Presentation is source tells, dramatizes, or otherwise disseminates in formation to learners. It is a one-way communication controlled by the source, with no immediate response from or interaction with learners.
• ·         Demonstration is recorded and played back by means of media such as video. If two-ways interaction or learner practice with feedback is desired, a live instructor or a tutor is needed.
• ·         Discussion involves the exchange of ideas and opinions among students or among students and teacher. It can be used at any stage of the instruction/learning process, and in small or large groups.
• ·         Drill and Practive, learners are led through a series of practice exercises designed to increase fluency in a new skill or to refresh and existing one.
• ·         Tutorial is most often done one on one and is frequently used to teach basic skills, such as reading and arithmetic.
• ·         Cooperative Learning is a growing body of research supports the claim that students learn from each other when they work on projects as a team.
• ·         Gaming provides a playful environment in which learners follow prescribed rules as they strive to attain a challenging goal. It is a highly motivating technique, especially for tedious and repetitive content.
• ·         Simulation involves earners confronting a scaled-down version of a real-life situation. It allows realistic practive without the expense or risk otherwise involved.
• ·         Discovery uses an inductive, or inquiry, approact to learning; it presents problems to be soled through trial and error. Discovery learning can also assume the form of helping students to seek the information they wish to know abpit a topic of specific interest to them.
• ·         Problem Solving involvesplacing students in the active role of being confronted with a novel problem situated in the real world.

Technology

The word technology has always had a variety of connotations, ranging from mere hardware to a way of solving problems. The notion of technology being  a process is highlighted in the definition of instructionaltechnology given by the leading professional association in that field; “the theory and practice of design, development, utilization, management and evaluation of processes abd resources for learning”.