What are your beliefs about how people learn best? What is the purpose of learning theory in educational technology?
I believe people now a days are learning best via the resources they have at hand. Our current population learns best from multiple tools that utilize the student's auditory, tactile, and visual stimuli. The current generation is using more and more technology resources as they grow-- for example; the students are using cell phones at an earlier age. The majority of students are using social websites such as myspace, facebook, and twitter to communicate.
Learning theory in educational technology is helping to guide the way technology is starting to play an integral role in education. TNLI Teacher's Network Leadership Institute is starting to play a key role in getting teachers involved in policy making in education. Scholars such as John Dewey, and educational psychologists Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner propose that "children actively construct knowledge and this construction of knowledge happens in a social context." These social contexts are starting to come out via the internet, phones, and gaming technologies.
https://sites.google.com/a/boisestate.edu/edtechtheories/caron_brennaman
http://www.teachersnetwork.org/tnli/
You are right about how technology is changing the way people communicate. I feel incomplete without my cell phone because I use it to check everything. I have to admit that I myself am a Facebook Junkie!I just got the new HTC EVO and can stay even more connected than before because of it's quick web connections. I even posted to the discussion board with it today. My old phone would have made that task PAINFUL! I believe that education needs to tap into the technologies that students carry with them everywhere, utalizing them in as many ways possible for education.
ReplyDeleteI believe that without scholars finding connections and composing theories for educators to align with we would all be trying to find our way on our own. The theories provide a framework to guide us. There are so maney theories out there for us to choose from. It is up to each of us to find a theory that works best for us.