Learning Technology: Learning "With"

Learning "With"

• Overview:  Educators and teachers are excited about the potential that technology offers for improving students' learning and expanding students' worlds. Most research on the use of technology for learning has looked for features that make it more effective and efficient than instruction that does not incorporate technology. Other than case studies, most research on using computers in instruction has been done with school children and has tested commercial software packages.
  
  Most computer use in K-12 classrooms focuses on two applications: drill-and-practice software and computer programming. Technology can tap different skills than do textbooks and group work. For example, learners need to develop complex thinking skills. Spreadsheets, calculator software, word processing programs, and some math programs can relieve students of tedious calculating and copying, freeing them to focus on understanding concepts. 

Studies of both traditional pencil-and-paper methods and distance learning, such as web-based courses and two-way video courses, show that student--teacher and student--student interaction are vital to keeping students from dropping out and enabling them to learn effectively.

In many K-12 schools, students who have learning disabilities use specialized technology to support their learning. Text-reading technology helps students to learn new content, but technology alone does not help them learn to read better since they are not practicing reading.

The newest generation of computer applications for learning uses these computer advantages to help students do much more complex problems than they otherwise could. For example, applications have been developed to teach doctors how to read mammograms  to teach nurses how to manage patients in intensive care units, and to help high school students learn how to discuss policy issues. Use the Internet to allow students to read about, hear, and see new places and things that expand their knowledge of the world.

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