connecting student learning and technology (:

One thing that struck me in the reading was the difference between traditional teaching and a learner-centered teaching. In the past, teachers taught by asking the students to recite the passage that was given to them. In modern times, students are asked to take their own responsibility by doing research work and presenting it to the class. In this way, students are"forced" to take up ownership of their work. I believe that students who are generally more pro-active in their learning would gain more than the passive students.

Technology can be used in a learner-centered classroom through various ways.

1. Students are asked to conduct their own research about a particular topic. They can do this by gathering information from the internet. One consideration about this, I feel, is that students should be taught on how to discern the information that are from the web. This is because some of them might be misleading.
   
   
2. Students in a group can then converse their ideas through communication tools such as MSN, google chat etc. This allows them to come together for discussion if they could not find a convenient time and place for everyone to meet up. However, based on past experiences, online discussion usually ends up taking more time and the conversation tends to lose its focus.
   
   
3. Students can share the information that they've gathered by uploading them onto sharing folders such as Yahoo Groups, pbwiki, facebook, sharing folder on MSN etc. This allows easy sharing of information.
   
   
4. Students can present their information using Powerpoint slides, or collate/analyse data and present it in chart/graph forms via Microsoft Excel. All these help in the presentation of their project.
   
   
5. Various groups can then upload their project onto the web using blogspot or EduBlog or LiveJournal etc. for the whole class to view. This sharing of information through the internet can be practised among schools as well. All these technologies allow various groups of people from different places to come together to share their ideas.
   
   
6. Teachers can monitor the learning progress of the students throughout the whole year by asking their students to blog their weekly reflection down. This is done, for example, in the ICT module now.
   

All these technologies enable one to access information more easily and also, to gather resources from a wider scope. However, I feel that a teacher have to keep in mind that the technologies used should be relevant to the teaching objectives. One should not use it just for the sake of using it.

Oh! One random thought just came to my mind. For NA/NT classes, maybe one way to spark off their interest for class can be to play a video clip that is relevant to the topic that will be taught for the lesson. This can be considered as using technology during class also right? Ha.