Section 2 :
The Impact of Learning “ From ” Media and Technology in Schools
Section 2 :
The Impact of Learning “ From ” Media and Technology in Schools
The Meaning of Media and Technology as Tutors
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The foundation for the use of media and technology as “ tutors ” in schools is " educational communications ," i . e ., the deliberate and intentional act of communicating content to students with the assumption that they will learn something " from " these communications ( Krendl , Ware , Reid , & Warren , 1996 ). In educational communications , information or knowledge is encoded visually or verbally in the symbol systems ( media ) that are enabled by various technologies . For example , animation is a form of media that can be delivered to students via a variety of technologies such as the World Wide Web . Within a web-based science tutorial , an animation of the movement of the moon around the earth might be shown to students so that they can visualize and learn about the lunar phases .
The instructional processes inherent in the “ from ” approach to using media and technology in schools usually can be reduced to a series of simple steps :
1 ) exposing students to messages encoded in media and delivered by technology , 2 ) assuming that students perceive and encode these messages , 3 ) requiring a response to indicate that messages have been received , and 4 ) providing feedback as to the adequacy of the response .
Interaction in the “ from ” approach , if present , is normally operationalized in terms of student input via the technology such as clicking a mouse button to indicate a response to a multiple-choice question , some form of answer judging , and feedback in the form of another message previously encoded in the media . Instructional technologies ( e . g ., films and teaching machines ) were first introduced early in this century in the belief that they could “ teach ” in a similar sense that teachers or tutors are said to teach ( Cuban , 1986 ). This section of this report focuses on the two most widely used forms of media and technology as tutors today , specifically television and computers .
Learning “ from ” Television
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Popular Beliefs about TV
Since the first educational television broadcasts began in Iowa in 1933 , there have been decades of research focused on the educational effects of television , and yet controversies about the impact of television in schools and society as a whole persist . For example , some well-known social critics ( e . g ., Postman , 1995 , 1994 , 1985 ; Winn , 1985 ) maintain that television viewing is cognitively debilitating . A
6