Lesson 11

BALURAN, Jan Wethine D.

BSEd-Eng4A

TTh- 10:00-12:00pm

The Computer as a Teacher's Tool

     We saw how the computer can act as a tutor particularly along a behaviorist and cognitive approach to learning in the previous lesson. But we also saw certain computer software programs have been developed to foster higher thinking skills and creativity.

      In this lesson, we shall again look at the computer, but this time from another perspective the computer as the teacher’s handy tool. I can in fact support theconstructivist and social constructivist paradigms of constructivist learning. Constructivist was introduced by Piaget (1991) and Bruner (1990). They gave stress to knowledge discovery of new meaning/concepts/principles in the learning process. Various strategies have been suggested to foster knowledge discovery, among these, is making students engaged in gathering unorganized information from which they can induce ideas and principles. Students are also asked to apply discovered knowledge to new situations, a process for making their knowledge to real life situations. While knowledge is constructed by the individual learner in constructivism, knowledge can also be socially constructed. Social constructivism. This is an effort to show that the construction of knowledge is governed by social, historical and cultural contexts, in effect; this is to say that the learner who interprets knowledge has a predetermined point of view according to the social perspective of the community or society he lives in. The psychologist Vygotsky stressed that learning is affected by social influences. He therefore suggested the interaction process in learning. The more capable adult (teacher or parent) or classmate can aid or complement what the learner sees in a given class project. In addition Dewey sees language as a medium for social coordination and adaptation. For Dewey human learning is really human language that occurs when students socially share, build and agree upon meaning and knowledge.

   Based on the two learning theories, the teacher can employ the computer as an:

•         An information Tool

•         A communication Tool

•         A constructive Tool

•         As co- constructive Tool

•         A situating Tool

     Our instructors usually use their forms of gadgets like the laptop as their informatived tool in teaching. Also, we students use our phones and other gadget in order to acquire informations from the sites like the google chrome and the like. I also experienced the computer as a communication toool with the help of Edmodo, Facebook, google mails, and other programs that could actually help me interact with some people especially our instructors and classmates. Through this, teacher-student interaction will not only be limited to the actual classroom setting but also through online. We can also interconnect the computer as constructive tool here and the situating tool.

         Computer as a teacher's tool is very helpful not just to the teacher but also to thd students. This is because, through the use of computer as an aid, every student could not easily cope with the lessons, but it does not limits there but also it can help them in their daily task.

      As a future teacher, I should be able to introduce the computerto my students as a very effective tool in their learning. But, proper guidance should be well-implemented in order for them not to do restricted things.