The way in which a teacher conveys information to students has always been of the utmost importance as it can drastically change the effectiveness of the child’s learning. The theory of connectivism is incredibly important as shown in the following blog .In the past, teachers have relied heavily on handout instruction sheets or the child listening aurally to the teacher as they explain new topics. This is often hard for many students if they do not learn aurally or through writing, as a linguistic learner would. This leaves out the other 7 intelligences and thus an incredibly wide range of students who learn in these other ways. These intelligences (shown below) are incredibly important to consider when conveying information to students.
The increasing use of Web 2.0 in the classroom is one way to solve the problem of conveying information effectively to students. As students become increasingly technological, this web 2.0 approach becomes more appealing as technology is almost second nature to many children of today.
However, there are still many problems encountered as teachers learn to use these new technologies and appropriate situations to use them in. The teacher must maintain a high standard of individual work in the classroom at the same time as introducing students to the concept of collaborative group learning and technology as a new way to learn in the classroom and encouraging them to become active in their learning. Becoming active in their learning is incredibly important as social constructivism states that knowledge is not passively received but actively built up by the cognizing subject.
Teachers therefore need to focus on a few key areas when deciding how to convey new information to the student, such as:
- Does it allow for Gardner’s multiple intelligences?
- If the internet is used for conveying information, do the students have ready access to this resource?
- Are the students actively engaged with the work?
Question such as these and many others must be taken into account when deciding how to deliver new information to students via web 2.0. However, when the teacher does decide to use many of the new technologies to deliver new information to students, it can have an incredible effect on how they learn. For example, when studying Ancient Egypt, rather than using handouts and having the students write an essay, teachers can use a video from Youtube and Google Earth to show where the places are, and then have students work together on a wiki to create a collaborative assignment. This encompasses many different styles of learning and requires the students to work together to answer questions and thus follows the idea of collaborative and constructivist learning. The students become active in their education rather than passive.
The following link is to a video discusses Gardners theory in relation to students and the emergence of digital learners. This new concept is incredibly important to remember when converying new information to students.
