Constructive tool of ICT

It is s a general purpose tool that can be used to manipulate information, construct using students’ own knowledge or visualize their understanding. Constructive too such as Microsoft word or PowerPoint has a strong impact in the educational environment and is widely used in most organizations in the form of memos, reports, letters and presentations. This tool is based on the idea of constructivists believe in personal construction of meaning by learner through experience and that meaning is influenced by interaction of prior knowledge and new events.

This tool is away to generate new ways in teaching and learning through technology. The teachers can present their lesson using PowerPoint and this will make the students love the lesson. It will also decrease the memorization and route learning which was prevalent in most of the learning at school. It helps the learners to research using a wide range of resources on the internet and then enabling them to create their own knowledge using creativity.

Since there is a lot of information on the internet, the constructive tool triggers learning by helping learner to adopt, explore and practice. For example, Microsoft Word manages to help students to make correct sentences and texts as well as modern word processors include spelling check and dictionaries and grammar checkers. PowerPoint is advantageous in the context of increasing creativity among students and the Excel will expose students to learn design and statistical data.

We also designed a virtual tour guide of our hometown using simulation. We were asked to prepare it in one slide and that was a challenge until we figured out how it works. I made mine on Trashigang and talked about the district, the best places to visit and the kind of sports the people there play. We were asked to put audio in the form of music and recording and then submit the work.

How to blog

A blog is an online journal or informational website displaying information in the reverse chronological order, with the latest posts appearing first. It is a platform where a writer or even a group of writers share their views on an individual subject. Last session we learned how to create a blog so we could write our reflection on the five constructive tools. This time I am going to write down how we were asked to create a blog for ourselves. We were given a video tutorial and asked to follow the steps.

We created our blog on blogspots.com but to create any blog account an email account was necessary. Once we get into the new dashboard, we are to follow a series of steps before the final finish. We first need to choose a title for the blog. It should be something related to what we are going to write and blog about. Then we need to create a blogging address for a domain name. This address will help people find us on the internet. 

Next we have to choose a template for our blog and we were asked to choose ethereal theme for uniformity. After pressing the ‘create blog’ button, our blog is ready. We can edit our profile if we want to and then post articles related to the topic. I chose my title as integrating ICT in teaching and learning and my blog address is lhadenictastoolsforteaching.blogspot.com. This is my third post to the blog and to keep the readers engaged we need to keep up with the regularity of blogging.

Blogging for business, projects, or anything else that might bring money have a straightforward purpose. Another purpose of blogging is to connect to the world to relevant audience. The more frequent, the better the blog posts are.. Blogs also promote perfect reading engagement and a chance to comment and voice different concerns to the viewer. Therefore a blog is a strong communicative tool

ICT as communicative tool

Communicative tools are systems that allow easy communication between teachers and students or between students outside the physical barrier classroom. It is including e-mails, electronic bulletin boards, chat, teleconference and any more. Students email, blog, chat to discuss a topic, dissect an issue, dialogue and interpreting each others’ information. They use the tool to collaborate and to produce a product consolidated from individual contribution.

There are two types of communicative tools. The first one is called a synchronous communicative tool which included chat or video conferences enabling the users a real time communication. It is normally used for instructional activities that require a higher level of interaction to make the students understand. It also helps solve urgent problems or issues at a faster rate and with more convenience and without the need to wait for it.

 

This was the time when we had a google meet with our tutor and talked on the communicative tool.

The difficulties of this communicative tool are mainly of the multiple threads of discussions. This makes it hard to keep track of the discussions that are going on. Then if people are situated in places where the internet connectivity is very slow, it makes the learner lose their enthusiasm. Sometimes the one discussion may lead to many other side discussions and this will make the lesson diverge from its objectives. Also those learners who are slow at typing will take time to type their comments and this will lead to further frustration. 

The second is called an asynchronous communicative tool. This is a system in which exchange of messages between people are not ‘live’ but somehow delayed. This type of tool is most appropriate for activities requiring more time to think before responding. For example, the virtual learning environment is easy to use as it is primarily text-based system and the learners can take their own time at exploring the question and posting a good answer.

The difficulties with this tool are the frequency of participation from the learners is minimized because somehow having the time to think and post and read other learner’s comments makes one lose the count of task and forget it. Another is the amount of times one needs to check on the discussion done is an additional task. The learners need to maintain a consistency with their participation in the discussion and sometimes this leads to them losing interest in learning.

Information and Communication Technology as informative tool 

Information and communication technology will provide help to teachers in improving their teaching and learning in the classroom. There are five tools to provide assistance:

1. informative tool
2. communicative tool
3.  constructive tool
4. co-constrictive tool
5. situating tool

In particular, I would like to talk about the informative tool. 

Informative tools are applications that provide a large amount of information in various formats such as texts, graphics, sounds or videos. Informative tool can be regarded as passive repository of information. Examples includes: multimedia encyclopedia, digital library, music, videos, youtube. The internet is an enormous database and everyone including the teachers consider internet as the most important ICT tool in e-learning environments.

Students rely on the internet to help them do their homework and so does the parents while they are on the responsibility of their children's learning. The teachers, parents and students all consider the internet as a virtual textbook, reference library, virtual tutor and a virtual study group. Another common source of information is the television. This source has provided to benefit most of the rural areas in the country where the internet connectivity is very weak. The students there use the channels on the TV to drive out the best information.

The benefits of informative tools

This tool helps in integrating the relevant ideas from different sources. If the students are given a project to do on climate change, they will have to segregate through millions of information which will first develop their search skills. All the information accessible will not be of relevance to the project work so the students need to be able to segregate them and in doing so, they will learn how to be specific while typing their searches on URL. Then after the information, they will have to read through many sources and then integrate the varieties to meet a good end product.  

While there are millions of sources on the internet, not all the sources are authentic. To authenticate and verify the information searched, the student will need to evaluate the resources and this will add to their learning. They will also have to analyze and criticize the information which will end up helping them be more logical and be able to select the right information that they might need. Altogether, this will enhance the critical thinking, develop information search skills and learn to evaluate resources on the internet.