"ICT for education. Affordability and constrains of interactive educational multimedia" (my essay)

Information and communication technology (ICT) is seen as having great potential for
revolutionizing education. What is missing in much of the current debate is a theoretical perspective on the learning processes that can be used as a foundation for creative recommendations of how to construct pedagogically valuable tools based on ICT. There is a wide range of aspects of the use of ICT in education that should be discussed. In this essay two different aspects are discussed in order to have an idea about affordability and constrains of interactive educational multimedia.
As Olson says (Olson, 1990)[1] “…narrative serves to make events comprehensible, memorable and communicable”. Narrative is central to the processes of understanding, remembering, and communicating that underpin teaching and learning. Lydia Plowman points out the importance of a narrative structure for understanding in educational setting. Plowman examines under what circumstances interactive educational multimedia can provide a narrative structure, trying to find a balance between freedom and linearity for the students’ interaction with the material. Teachers lose some of this control over the learning process once interactive media are introduced into teaching for logistical reasons such as because the students are using tutorial-type software. Plowman investigated teaching and learning with interactive media (Plowman, 1996a)[2] and in this study found that learners lacked overall strategies for dealing with a task because they preferred to try out different possibilities fairly arbitrarily at the computer; Decision making and associated physical interaction with the computer intrude on and militate against coherence of the learning experience, with the result that learning can then become fragmented. Reading this article I thought about the role of human teachers. The design of interactive media is still a long way from being as sophisticate as teacher: they provide narrative guidance, are able to elicit knowledge from students and respond to them, they are able to take account of the individuality of learners, the social context and environment. They provide what Mercer(1995)[3] called the guided construction of knowledge, so my opinion is that the teacher’s role must remain central to the learning process.
Cuban(2001)[4] reports that teachers tend to view computers as audiovisual equipment and use them to support rather than drive teaching and learning. In contrast to the situation in mainstream schools, ICT in many special schools has become an everyday and essential element of teaching and learning. The reason for the importance of ICT in special needs education is a consequence of the many innovations that have occurred in the ways in which technology can support children with special needs. Virtual environments, for people with learning difficulties, have been described by Cromby et al.(1996)[5](Standen et al. 2001)[6]. Virtual environments (“Virtual reality”) are computer generated, three-dimensional environments which respond in real time to the activity of the users: the user moves through the apparent three-dimensional space shown on screen, and interacts with items in the environment using standard computer input device such as keyboard, mouse, joystick, spaceball or touch screen. A tutor working beside the learner can create an atmosphere in which learning is enhanced through maintaining the learner’s attention, through sharing activities and by assigning meaning to the learner’s behaviour by relating it to material they already know. Vigotsky highlighted the importance of working with a tutor in this way (Vygotsky 1978)[7]. Cromby draws attention to three characteristics of virtual environments that make them particularly appropriate for people with learning difficulties. First virtual environments create the opportunity to learn by making mistakes but without suffering the real humiliating or dangerous consequences of their errors; Secondly, virtual worlds can be manipulated: a simple world could be constructed first and, as the user becomes more familiar with the task, more complex worlds can be substituted. Thirdly, in virtual environments, rules and abstract concepts can be conveyed without the use of language or the symbol systems, because they have their own “natural semantic” (Bricken 1991)[8], in that the qualities of objects can be discovered by interacting with them. Reading works about the use of virtual environments suggest to me that they have potential to helping with the acquisition of skills, which would increase independence for people with learning disabilities (Florian, Hegarty)[9]. One of the main problem is to keep costs down and make the system user-friendly so that this aid to learning is widely available and usable by as many people with learning difficulties as possible; But anyway I think that virtual reality offers a useful additional teaching opportunity.
To draw a conclusion there are lot of issues using new communication technologies for lerning, such as “Digital Divide”: that term has come to mean a lack of equal access to electronic resources (Fishman,1999)[10].Beside the bottleneck of the progress of ICT in education is our “lack of understanding of the complex process contributing to human learning and how they interact with new technologies”(Gardenfors, Johansson, 2005)[11]. Moreover successful ICT use requires a mixture of professionalism both in the technical expertise and in the teaching aspects of ICT. But ICTs have great potential for revolutionizing education. It is positive that some efforts were made to implement distance education in a technologically impoverished region and to help schools learn how to use computing as a learning(Rubens2000)[12]. There are more and more opportunities to acquire software and resources from the Internet. This includes both sites that are specifically designed for teachers and those maintained by companies or organizations that have useful resources for special educational needs work (Department of Education and skills, 2002)[13]. There are also sites maintained by local authorities (Lewisham Borought Council 2002)[14] that offer a selection of links to useful resources for teachers. In conclusion, I believe that large investments in research in psychology, pedagogy and communication must be made.

References

Bricken, W. (1991) Training in virtual reality, in Proceeding of the 1st International Conference on Virtual Reality. London: Mecler International.

Cromby, J.J., Standen, P.J. and Brown, D.J. (1996) The potentials of virtual environments in the education and training of people with learning disabilities, Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 40: 489-501

Cuban L. (2001) Why are most teacher infrequent and restrained users of computers in their classroom?, in J. WoodWard and L. Cuban (eds) Techonology, Curriculum and Professional Development: Adapting Schools to Meet the Needs of Students with Disabilities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press

Department for education and skills (2002) SEN – Excellence for All (http://www.dfes.gov.uk/sen/)

Florian L., Hegarty J., 2004, ICT and special educational needs, McGraw-Hill Education, England

Fishman, Barry J. "Characteristics of Students Related to Computer-mediated Communications Activity." Journal o f Research on Computing in Education. 32: 73-98, 1999

Gardenfors P., Johansson P. (2005), Cognition, education and communication technology, Lawrence Erlbaum Assiciates Publishers, London

Lewisham Borough Council(2002) T@lent ICT training for teachers: special educational needs and ICT (http://ecs.lewisham.gov.uk/talent/pricor/sen.htlm )

Mercer, N. (1995). The guided construction of knowledge. Clevedon, England: multilingual Matters.

Olson, D.R. (1990). Thinking about narrative. In B. Britton & A. Pellegrini (Eds.), Narrative thought and narrative language (pp.99-111). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Plowman L., (1996a). Designing interactivity media for schools: a review based on contextual observation. Information Design Journal, 8, 258-266.

Standen, P.J., Brown, D.J. and Cromby, J.J. (2001) The effective use of virtual environments in the education and rehabilitation of pupils with intellectual disabilities, British Journal of Educational Technology, www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1467-8535.00199

Rubens ,P., Southard, S., Using new technologies for communication and learning, http://portal.acm.org.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/citation.cfmid=504800.504829&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=27360439&CFTOKEN=96777154

Vygotsky,L.S. (1978) Mind in society: The development of higer Psychological Processe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.