IT Learning Journal

Week 1 Learning Log

Paragraphs on First IT Readings for Mind Map

“Digital Native, Digital Immigrants” Prensky 2001

Students have radically changed in the way they learn. These “digital natives” may have brains that have changed significantly so that sequential step-by-step learning is not likely to succeed with them. They require fast and urgent information, allowing random access between information threads. Graphics lead meaning and meaning is best housed in electronic games. We, their instructors, may seem like foreigners to them, speaking a different language or at least a heavily accented language. They can spot us and we bore them. They were born networked, and we cannot retard their cultural migration to the digital world. It is essential that today’s educators confront the task of marrying legacy content to future content – to go faster and less step-by-step, to think in terms of “edutainment” and to get on with it – “Just do it!”

Anti-thought: Is the article’s claim right that students are fundamentally different now. When one studies Ancient History, humans from the past seem so similar to humans from today, and the learning of an ancient language like Latin allows us to feel so at home in the minds of the ancients? Is the change claimed in the article only superficial? And…just because students of today may prefer electronic games, should we the educators go with their preferences. What about that theory that sees teaching as “behaviour modification”?



“Cultural Change Needed to Exploit ICT in Schools” Elliott 2004

Despite 20 years or more of computers in schools, computers are not being used well in most school classrooms. This is the more puzzling because governments are pressing ICT in schools but teachers seem unable to manage the individual-needs-classroom that ICT creates. The “sage on the stage” model is deep in the psyche of teachers. While Principals can influence the uptake of ICT through targeted budgeting and PD, the challenge remains to carry the bulk of teachers along – perhaps following the “difference” in the “early adopter” teachers who have run with technology in schools. A “digital divide” is widening as a minority of schools stride forward into the digital world and the majority hang back.

“Personal Computing: A Source of Powerful Cognitive Tools” Rowe 1996

This wordy article is contained in its last section where 6 benefits of using computers to improve human learning are cited:

1. large amounts of information are made available supplementing limited human memory;
2. retrieval or previously learnt information;
3. prompting connection of ideas;
4. providing self-testing;
5. enabling re-presentation of information;
6. providing easy traffic between blocks of information.

Week 2 Learning Log

“Facilitating Deep learning in the Adult Online Learner” Fabio 2005
Again, is was a wordy lecture with unnecessarily complex language and “edu-speak” – perhaps because of an attempt to corroborate findings using statistical data. Nevertheless, the point to be made is largely commonsense – that “students do behave differently in courses that emphasize collaboration or task structure values” (p. 5). The greater scaffolding of knowledge in an organised way leads to deeper learning and less off-task digression. It is a mild attack on Vygotsky, I think, and social constructivism.

Most interesting were the last pages that analysed the way discussions could go off-task and the ways discussions could be more conducive to deeper learning.