LESSON 5 - THE CONE OF EXPERIENCE

LESSON 5 – The Cone Of Experience 

“The cone is a visual analogy, and like all analogies, it does not bear an exact an detailed relationship to the complex elements it represents.” – Edgar Dale

ABSTRACTION:

The cone of experience is a visual model, a pictorial device that presents bands of experience arranged according to degree of abstraction and not degree of difficulty. The farther you go from the bottom of the cone, the more abstract the experience becomes.

Dale (1969) asserts that:

the pattern of arrangement of the bands of experience is not difficulty but degree of abstraction – the amount of immediate sensory participation that is involved. A still photograph of a tree is not more difficult of understand than a dramatization of Hamlet. It is simply in itself a less concrete teaching material than the dramatization. (Dale, 1969)

Dale further explains that “the individual bands of the cone of Experience stand for experiences that are fluid, extensive, and continually interact.” (Dale, 1969) It should not be taken literally in its simplified form. The different kinds of sensory aid often overlap and sometimes blend into one another. Motion pictures can be silent or they can combine sight and sound. Students may merely view a demonstration or they may view it then participate in it.

Does the Cone of Experience mean that all teaching and learning must move systematically from base to pinnacle, from direct purposeful experiences to verbal symbols? Dale (1969) categorically says:

             …. No. We continually shuttle back and forth among various kinds of experiences. Every day each of us acquires new concrete experiences – through walking on the street, gardening, dramatics, and endless other means. Such learning by doing, such pleasurable return to the concrete is natural throughout our lives – and at every age level. On the other hand, both the older child and the young pupil make abstractions every day and may need help in doing this well.

                 In our teaching, then, we do not always begin with direct experience at the base of the Cone. Rather, we begin with the kind of experience that is most appropriate to the needs and abilities of particular learner in a particular learning situation. Then, of course, we vary this experience with many other types of learning activities. (Dale, 1969)

One kind of sensory experience is not necessarily more educationally useful than another. Sensory experiences are mixed and interrelated. When students listen to you as you give your lecturette, they do not just have an auditory experience. They also have visual experience in the sense that they are “reading” your facial expressions and bodily gestures.

We face some risk when we overemphasize the amount of direct experience to learn a concept. Too much reliance on concrete experience may actually obstruct the process of meaningful generalization. The best will be striking a balance between concrete and abstract, direct participation and symbolic expression for the learning that will continue throughout life.

Is it true that the older a person is, the more abstract his concepts are likely to be? This can be attributed to physical maturation, more vivid experiences and sometimes greater motivation for learning. But an older student does not live purely in his world of abstract ideas just a child does not live only in the world of sensory experience. Both old and young shuttle in a world of the concrete and the abstract.

What are these bands of experience in Dale’s Cone of Experience? It is best to look back at the cone itself.  But let us expound on each of them starting with the most direct.

Direct purposeful experiences- These are first hand experiences which serve as the foundation of our learning. We build up our reservoir of meaningful information and ideas though seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. In the context of the teaching-learning process, it is leaning by doing. If I want my student to learn how to focus a compound light microscope, I will let him focus one, after I showed him how.

Contrived Experiences – In here, we make use of a representative models or mock ups of reality for practical reasons and so that we can make the real-life accessible to the students’ perceptions and understanding. For instance a mock of Apollo, the capsule for the exploration of the moon, enabled the North America Co. to study the problem of lunar flight.

Remember how you were taught to tell time? Your teacher may have used a mock up, a clock, whose hands you could turn to set the time you were instructed to set.

Dramatized experience – By dramatization, we can participate in a reconstructed experience, even though the original event is far removed from us in time. We relive the outbreak of the Philippine revolution by acting out the role of characters in a drama.

Demonstrations – It is a visualized explanation of an important fact, idea or process by the use of photographs, drawings, films, displays, or guided motions. It is showing how things are done. A teacher in Physical Education shows the class how to dance tango.

Study trips – These are excursions and visits conducted to observe an event that is unavailable within the classroom.

Exhibits – These are displays to be seen by spectators. They may consist of working models arranged meaningfully or photographs with models, charts, and posters. Sometimes exhibits are “for your eyes only”. There are some exhibits, however, that include sensory experiences where spectators are allowed to touch or manipulate models displayed.

Television and motion pictures – Television and motion pictures can reconstruct the reality of the past so effectively that we are made to feel we are there. The unique value of the messages communicated by film and television lies in their feeling of realism, their emphasis on persons and personality, their organized presentation, and their ability to select, dramatize, highlight, and clarify.

Still pictures, Recordings, Radio – These are visual and auditory devices may be used by an individual or a group. Still pictures lack the sound and motion of a sound film. The radio broadcast of an actual event may often be likened to a televised broadcast minus its visual dimension.

Visual symbols – These are no longer realistic reproduction of physical things for these are highly abstract representations. Examples are charts, graphs, maps, and diagrams.

Verbal Symbols – They are not like the objects or ideas for which they stand. They usually do not contain visual clues to their meaning. Written words fall under this category. It may be a word for a concrete object (book), an idea (freedom of speech), a scientific principle (the principle of balance), a formula (e=mc2) 

LESSON 2 - BOON OR BANE

LESSON 2 - Technology: Boon or Bane

“Technology is in our hands. We can use it to build or destroy.”

After understanding what educational technology is all about, it may be good to reflect on whether this thing called technology is a boon or bane to education, a blessing or a curse to education.

TECHNOLOGY AS BOON:

TECHNOLOGY AS BANE:

    Technology is a blessing for man. With technology, there is a lot that we can do which we could not do then. With cellphones (smartphones), webcam, you will be closer to someone miles and miles away. So far yet close! That is your feeling when you talk through a cell phone to a beloved who is far away from home.  Just think of the many human lives saved because of speedy notifications via cellphones. Just think how your teaching and learning have become more novel, stimulating, exciting and engaging with the use of multimedia in the classroom. With your tv, you can watch events as they happen all over the globe. President Ramos had a lively interaction with his audience in Tacloban in his tele-address without disrupting his work schedule in Manila, etc, etc.

      However, when not used properly, technology becomes a detriment to learning and development. It can destroy relationships. Think of the husband who is glued to tv unmindful of his wife seeking his attention. This may eventually erode marital relationships. Think of the student who surfs pornographic scenes. He will have trouble with his development. The abuse and misuse of the Internet will have far reaching unfavorable effects on his moral life. The teacher who schedules class tv viewing for the whole hour free herself from one-hour teaching and so can engage in “tsismis”, likewise will not benefit from technology. Neither will her class truly benefit from the whole period of tv Viewing.

   In education, technology is bane when:

• the learner is made to accept as Gospel truth information they get from the internet
• the learner surfs the Internet for pornography
• the learner has an uncritical mind on images floating on televisions and computers that represent modernity and progress
• the tv makes the learner a mere spectator not an active participant in the drama of life
• the learner gets glued to his computer for computer-assisted instruction unmindful of the world and so fails to develop the ability to relate to others
• we make use of the Internet to do the character assassination of people whom we hardly like
• because of our cell phone, we spend most of our time in the classroom or in our workplace texting
• we use overuse and abuse tv or film viewing as a strategy to kill time

             Let’s go back to the question asked in the beginning of this lesson. Is technology boon or bane to education? It depends on how we use technology. If we use it to help our students and teachers become caring, relating, thinking, reflecting and analyzing and feeling beings, then it is a boon, a blessing. But if we abuse and misuse it and so contribute to our ruin and downfall and those of other persons, it becomes a bane or curse.

APPLICATIONS: 

A.    Come up with your own poster regarding technology on how it can be a blessing or a curse to mankind.

LESSON 4 – SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO TEACHING

LESSON 4 – Systematic Approach To Technology

“A plan emphasizes the parts may pay the cost of failing to consider the whole, and a plan that emphasizes the whole must pay the cost of failing to get down to the real depth with respect to the parts.” - C. West Churchman

                 The broad definition of educational technology encompasses systems or designs of instruction. In this lesson, let's discuss a system's or a systematic approach to instruction.

                 SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO TEACHING

                       As depicted in the chart, the focus of systematic instructional planning is the student. Instruction begins with the definition of instructional objectives that consider the student's needs, interest and readiness. On the basis of these objectives, the teacher selects appropriate teaching methods to be used and, in turn, based on the teaching method selected, the appropriate learning experiences and appropriate materials, equipment and facilities will also be selected.

                       The use of learning materials, equipment and facilities necessitates assigning the appropriate personnel to assist the teacher and defining the role of any personnel involved in the preparation, setting and returning of these learning resources. (In some school settings, there is a custodian/librarian who takes care of the learning resources and/or technician who operates the equipment while teacher facilitates.) The effective use of learning resources is dependent on the expertise of the teacher, the motivation level or responsiveness, and the involvement of the students in the learning process. With the instructional objective in the mind, the teacher implements planned instruction with the use of the the selected teaching method, ;earning activities, and learning materials with the help of other personnel whose role has been defined by the teacher.

                      Will the teacher use direct instruction or indirect instruction? Will he/she teach using the deductive of the inductive approach? It depends on his/her instructional objective, nature of the subject matter, readiness of the students and the expertise of the teacher himself or herself.

                      Example of learning activities that the teacher can choose from, depending on his/her instructional objective, nature of the lesson content, readiness of the students, are reading, writing, interviewing, reporting or doing presentation, discussing, thinking, reflecting, dramatizing, visualizing, creating judging and evaluating.

                     Some examples of learning resources for instructional use are textbooks, workbooks, programmed materials, computer, television programs, flat pictures, slides and transparencies, maps, charts, cartoons, posters, models, mock ups, flannel board materials, chalkboard, real objects and the like.

                     After instruction, teacher evaluates the outcome of instruction. From the evaluation results, teacher comes to know if the instructional was attained. If the the instructional objective was attained, teacher proceeds to the next lesson going through the same cycle once more. If instructional objective was attained, then teacher diagnosis what was not learned and finds out why it was not learned in order to introduce a remedial measure for improved students performance and attainment of instructional objective.

                     The systems approach views the entire educational program as a system of closely interrelated parts. It is an orchestrated learning pattern with all parts harmoniously integrated into the whole: the school, the teacher, the students, the objectives, the media, the materials, and assessment tools and procedures. Such an approach integrates the older, more familiar methods and tools of instruction with the new ones such as the computer.


                      The system's approach to instruction is simple in theory but far from being simplistic in practice. It is not just a matter of teacher formulating his/her lesson objective and then directly teaching the student. There are a lot of elements or factors that the teacher has to take into consideration- students' needs, interests, home background, prior experiences, developmental stage, nature and the like. The teacher, in the choice of the most appropriate teaching method, learning activities, and learning resources, considers the nature of her subject matter, availability of resources, her/his capability, the developmental stage of his students, and of course his/her lesson objective. Her/his choice of assessment method for learning is likewise dependent on the lesson objective. The action the teacher takes after getting assessment results based on the assessment results, acceptability of remedial measure to parents and students, like a tutorial class after class hours. Will an extra hour after class devoted to tutorial be acceptable to the students and parent concerned?

                  
                      The phases or elements are connected to one another. If one element or one phase of the instructional process fails, the outcome which is learning is adversely affected. The attainment of the learning objective is dependent on the synergy of all elements and of all actors involved in the process.


                       The purpose of a system instructional design is "to ensure orderly relationships and interaction of human, technical, and environmental resources to fulfill the goals which have been established for instruction." (Brown, 1969)

           POSTSCRIPT - the phase of  a systematic Approach to Instruction. If we reduce the phases of a systematic approach to instruction, the phases may boil down to three. The first of the three is formulation of instructional objectives. The second is the process of instruction itself. The third phase is assessment of learning which will once more lead to the formulation of instructional objectives.

LESSON 3 – THE ROLES OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY IN LEARNING

LESSON 3 – The Roles of Educational Technology in Learning

“Technology makes the world a new place.”

    After understanding the comprehensive meaning of educational technology, let us dwell on the roles of educational technology in the teaching-learning process.

LESSON 1 - MEANING OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY

"Educational Technology 1"

this blog was made by Jason Lee D. San Jose

                 

 Throwback Time!!!! 

Charlton Heston as Moses. Are the tablets of stone an educational technology?

             

              Particularly in recent years, technology has changed from being a peripheral factor to becoming more central in all forms of teaching. Nevertheless, arguments about the role of technology in education go back at least 2,500 years.  To understand better the role and influence of technology on teaching, we need a little history, because as always there are lessons to be learned from history. Paul Saettler’s ‘The Evolution of American Educational Technology’ (1990) is one of the most extensive historical accounts, but only goes up to 1989. A lot has happened since then. I’m giving you here the postage stamp version, and a personal one at that.

             Technology has always been closely linked with teaching. According to the Bible, Moses used chiseled stone to convey the ten commandments, probably around the 7th century BC. But it may be more helpful to summarise educational technology developments in terms of the main modes of communication.

Oral communication

              One of the earliest means of formal teaching was oral – though human speech – although over time, technology has been increasingly used to facilitate or ‘back-up’ oral communication. In ancient times, stories, folklore, histories and news were transmitted and maintained through oral communication, making accurate memorization a critical skill, and the oral tradition is still the case in many aboriginal cultures. 

               

              For the ancient Greeks, oratory and speech were the means by which people learned and passed on learning. Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey were recitative poems, intended for public performance. To be learned, they had to be memorized by listening, not by reading, and transmitted by recitation, not by writing.

              Nevertheless, by the fifth century B.C, written documents existed in considerable numbers in ancient Greece. If we believe Socrates, education has been on a downward spiral ever since. According to Plato, Socrates caught one of his students (Phaedrus) pretending to recite a speech from memory that in fact he had learned from a written version. Socrates then told Phaedrus the story of how the god Theuth offered the King of Egypt the gift of writing, which would be a ‘recipe for both memory and wisdom’. The king was not impressed. According to the king,

‘it [writing] will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they will rely on what is written, creating memory not from within themselves, but by means of external symbols. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminding. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them many things without teaching them anything, you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they will know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellow men.’ "Phaedrus, 274c-275, translation adapted from Manguel, 1996"

                  I can just hear some of my former colleagues saying the same thing about social media.

The term ‘lecture’, which comes from the Latin ‘to read’, is believed to originate from professors in medieval times reading from the scrolled manuscripts handwritten by monks (around 1200 AD). Because the process of writing on scrolls was so labour intensive, the library would usually have only one copy, so students were usually forbidden direct access to the manuscripts. Thus scarcity of one technology tends to drive the predominance of other technologies.

                  Slate boards were in use in India in the 12th century AD, and blackboards/chalkboards became used in schools around the turn of the 18th century. At the end of World War Two the U.S. Army started using overhead projectors for training, and their use became common for lecturing, until being largely replaced by electronic projectors and presentational software such as Powerpoint around 1990. This may be the place to point out that most technologies used in education were not developed specifically for education but for other purposes (mainly business.)

                   Although the telephone dates from the late 1870s, the standard telephone system never became a major educational tool, not even in distance education, because of the high cost of analogue telephone calls for multiple users, although audio-conferencing has been used to supplement other media since the 1970s.  Video-conferencing using dedicated cable systems and dedicated conferencing rooms have been in use since the 1980s. The development of video compression technology and relatively low cost video servers in the early 2000s led to the introduction of lecture capture systems for recording and streaming classroom lectures in 2008. Webinars now are used largely for delivering lectures over the Internet. None of these technologies though changes the oral basis of communication for teaching.

Written communication

                   The role of text or writing in education also has a long history. Even though Socrates is reported to have railed against the use of writing, written forms of communication make analytic, lengthy chains of reasoning and argument much more accessible, reproducible without distortion, and thus more open to analysis and critique than the transient nature of speech. The invention of the printing press in Europe in the 15th century was a truly disruptive technology, making written knowledge much more freely available, very much in the same way as the Internet has done today. 

                   As a result of the explosion of written documents resulting from the mechanization of printing, many more people in government and business were required to become literate and analytical, which led to a rapid expansion of formal education in Europe. There were many reasons for the the development of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and triumph of reason and science over superstition and beliefs, but the technology of printing was a key agent of change.

Improvements in transport infrastructure in the 19th century, and in particular the creation of a cheap and reliable postal system in the 1840s, led to the development of the first formal correspondence education, with the University of London offering an external degree program by correspondence from 1858. 

                 This first formal distance degree program still exists today in the form of the University of London International Program. In the 1970s, the Open University transformed the use of print for teaching through specially designed, highly illustrated printed course units that integrated learning activities with the print medium, based on advanced instructional design.With the development of web-based learning management systems in the mid-1990s, textual communication, although digitized, became, at least for a brief time, the main communication medium for Internet-based learning, although lecture capture is now changing that.

LESSON 1 - MEANING OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY

"EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY"

What is Educational Technology ?

                                                                                                         
  Educational Technology - is the effective use of technological tools in learning. As a concept, it concerns an array of tools, such as media, machines and networking hardware, as well as considering underlying theoretical perspectives for their effective application.

Educational technology is not restricted to high technology. Nonetheless, electronic educational technology, also called e-learning, has become an important part of society today, comprising an extensive array of digitization approaches, components and delivery methods. For example, m-learning emphasizes mobility, but is otherwise indistinguishable in principle from educational technology.

Educational technology includes numerous types of media that deliver text, audio, images, animation, and streaming video, and includes technology applications and processes such as audio or video tape, satellite TV, CD-ROM, and computer-based learning, as well as local intranet/extranet and web-based learning. Information and communication systems, whether free-standing or based on either local networks or the Internet in networked learning, underlie many e-learning processes.

Theoretical perspectives and scientific testing influence instructional design. The application of theories of human behavior to educational technology derives input from instructional theory, learning theory, educational psychology, media psychology and human performance technology.

Educational technology and e-learning can occur in or out of the classroom. It can be self-paced, asynchronous learning or may be instructor-led, synchronous. It is suited to distance learning and in conjunction with face-to-face teaching, which is termed blended learning. Educational technology is used by learners and educators in homes, schools (both K-12 and higher education), businesses, and other settings.

ACTIVITY: 

                A. Work in a small groups, Explain what educational technology is by using this spider web organizer.