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Classroom Culture and Technology. Part 1.

Classroom Culture and Technology. Part 1.



November 8, 2017

culture-and-technologyHow teachers plan for, use, supplement, and integrate computers determines its educational value and how students learn via technology. In the classroom, teachers and learners interact and contribute to a shared classroom culture. Because educational computing is necessarily permeated with cultural values as well as beliefs, it alters the existing classroom culture. Hence, the computer modifies the goals of the teacher, the way time is allocated to a given task, how learners participate, and it affects the social and language processes as well.

What learners and teachers know about technology modifies the classroom culture. In many places of the world, for example, some children may have greater contact and experience with computers than teachers. As a result, the unidirectional learning paradigm of adult teaching disappears. Thus, the new classroom culture, due to technology, promotes multidirectional learning of technology. Consequently, teachers become learners and learners become teachers. This multidirectional interaction creates a unique cooperative and open learning environment where everyone is a teacher and everyone is a learner.

But that is only a part. Just as the computer alters the classroom culture, classroom culture alters the use of the computer. Teachers, as well as learners, tend to use the computer in such a manner as to fit the task at hand. For example, where individual work is the goal, the computer is used for individual practice, where the focus is on collaboration, the computer is used by small groups. Thus, Cultural and individual learning preferences mediate their use; the preferred mode of communication, the preferred mode of relating and the preferred mode of obtaining support, acceptance and recognition all guide the organization of the classroom for computed assisted instruction (CAI). The members of a given group of learns do not have the same cognitive and learning preferences, so flexibility, variety, and balance in the instruction practices of CAI best support a variety of cultural and personal differences. A mismatch between the learner’s cultural preferences and the physical environment of the classroom can result in diminished learning opportunities.

Research findings are still few and inconclusive regarding how cultural preferences mediate in CAI. However, there are some indications on how computers can mediate learning. First, the contention that the computer is partial and that it transforms experience is relevant to education. Ultimately, the interaction with the computer involves communication between the learner and the software, or better said, the person who wrote the program. In many cases, the computer reduces knowledge to chunks, what experts call discrete data, and thus eliminates heuristic forms of communication. Many cultures, whose individuals are primordially holistic learners, may find it difficult to manipulate data in chunks, discrete elements. Second, computers tend to intensify the notion that individual autonomy is highly recommendable. However, individuality is not a universally accepted value; many regard cooperation, collaboration and group participation desirable traits.

November 8, 2017
Teaching & Learning