Lesson 8

HIGHER THINKING SKILLS THROUGH IT-BASED PROJECTS

 

-In this lesson, we shall discuss four types of IT-based projects which can effectively be used in order to engage students in activities of a higher plane of thinking.

KEY ELEMENTS OF CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH

-The teacher creating the learning environment.

-The teacher giving students the tool and facilities.

-The teacher facilitating learning.

FOUR IT-BASED PROJECTS

-Resource-Based Projects

-Simple Creations

-Guided Hypermedia Projects

-Web Based Projects

Resource-Based Projects

-The teacher steps out of the traditional role of being a context expert and information provider, and instead lets the students find their own facts and information

The general flows of events in resourced-based projects:

-The teacher determines the topic for the examination of class.

-The teacher presents the problem to the class.

-The students find information on the problem/questions.

-Students organize their information in response to the problems/questions.

-The inquiry-based or discovery approach is given importance in resource-based projects. This requires that the students, individually or cooperatively with members of his group, relate gathered information to the real world.

-Web quest as a resource. San Diego State University developed the web quest as an internet approach to support resource-based projects. A web quest is an inquiry-oriented in which most information used by learners are drawn from the web.

Simple Creations

-Students can also be assigned to create their software materials to supplement the need for relevant and effective materials.

Available Software Materials

-Creative Software by Microsoft on writing.

-Kid work Deluxe by Davidson on drawing and painting.

-Media Weave by Humanities Software on multimedia.

-In developing software, creativity as an outcome should not be equated with ingenuity. Creating is more consonant with planning, making, designing, assembling, and building. Creativity is said to combine three kinds of skills/abilities.

Three Kinds of Skills/Abilities

-Analyzing - distinguishing similarities and differences/ seeing the projects to be solved.

-Synthesizing - making spontaneous connections among ideas, thus generating interesting or new ideas.

-Promoting - selling new ideas to allow the public to test the ideas themselves.

The Five Key Task to Develop the Creativity

1. Define the task - clarify the goal of the completed project to the student.

2. Brainstorm - the students themselves will be allowed to generate their own ideas on the project.

3. Judge the ideas - the students themselves make an appraisal for or against any idea.

4. Act- the students do their work with the teacher a facilitator.

5. Adopt Flexibility - the students should be allowed to shift gears and not follow an action path rigidly.

Guided Hypermedia Projects

-The production of self-made multimedia projects can be approached in two different ways:

1. As an instructive tool, such as in the production by students of power-point presentation of a selected topic.

2. As a communication tool, such as when students do a multimedia presentation (with text, graphs, photo, audio narration, interview, video clips, etc.to simulate a television news show.

-Hyper Studio by Roger Wagner Productions software is an ex. of a multimedia software.

Web-Based Projects

 

-Students can be made to create and post webpages on a given topic.

-Posting of webpages in the internet allows the students a wider audience. They can also be linked with other related sites in the internet.

-Creativity projects as tools in the teaching learning process can be achieved with assistance of adviser adept in the technical use of internet resource.