The Roles of Educational Technology in Learning

• ·         Technology as tools to support knowledge construction:

For representing learners’ ideas, understandings and beliefs

For producing organized, multimedia knowledge bases by learners

• ·         Technology as information vehicles for exploring knowledge to support learning-by-constructing:

For accessing needed information

For comparing perspective, beliefs and world views

• ·         Technology as context to support learning-by-doing:

For representing and simulating meaningful real- world problems, situations and contexts

For representing beliefs, perspective, arguments, and stories of others

For representing a safe, controllable problem space for student thinking

• ·         Technology as a social medium to support learning by conversing:

For collaborating with others

For discussing, arguing, and building consensus among members of a community

For supporting discourse among knowledge-building communities

• ·         Technology as intellectual partner (Jonassen 1996) to support learning-by-reflecting:

For helping learners to articulate and represent what they know

For reflecting on what they have learned and how they came to know it

For supporting learners ‘internal negotiations and meaning making

For constructing personal representations of meaning

For supporting mindful thinking