Chapter 1 Learning with Technology: Technologies for Meaning Making

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Chapter 1 Learning with TechnologyTechnologies
for Meaning Making
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Learning with Technology

• Deliver and communication
• Student learn from technology what the technology
  knows or has been taught, just as they learn from
  the teacher what the teacher knows.
• Students learn from thinking thinking about
  what they are doing or what they did, thinking
  about what they believe, thinking about the
  thinking processes they use.
• Thinking mediates learning. Learning results from
  thinking.

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Thinking and Technologies

• Thinking is engaged by activity.
• Different activities engage different kinds of
  thinking.
• Technologies can foster and support learning, if
  they are used as tools and intellectual partners
  that help learners to think.

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Some Assumptions about Learning

• Constructivists believe that knowledge is
  constructed, not transmitted.
• Knowledge construction results from activity, so
  knowledge is embedded in activity.
• Knowledge is anchored in and indexed by the
  context in which activity occurs.

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Continued

• Meaning is in the mind of the knower.
• Therefore, there are multiple perspectives on the
  world.
• Meaning making is prompted by a problem,
  question, confusion, disagreement, or dissonance
  (a need or desire to know) and so involves
  personal ownership of that problem.

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Continued

• Knowledge-building requires articulation,
  expression, or representation of what is learned
  (meaning that is constructed)
• Meaning may also be shared with others, so
  meaning making can also result from conversation.
• So, meaning making and thinking are distributed
  throughout our tools, culture, and community.
• Not all meaning is created equally.

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Meaning Learning our goal for schools
Active (Manipulative Observant)
Constructive (Articulative/ Reflective)
Intentional (Reflective/ Regulatory)
Cooperative (Collaborative/ Conversational)
Authentic (Complex/ Contextualized)
Figure1.1 Five Attributes of Meaningful Learning
Are Interdependent
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Our Assumptions about Technology

• Traditional conceptions of educational
  technologies
• Our Conception of educational technologies
• How technologies foster learning
• Assumption about assessing and evaluating
  learning with technologies

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Traditional Conceptions of Educational
Technologies
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Conclusions

• Meaningful learning will result when technologies
  engage learners in
• Knowledge construction, not reproduction.
• Conversation, not reception
• Articulation, not repetition
• Collaboration, not competition
• Reflection, not prescription