Types of learning and learning technologies by Diana Laurillard. This sequence is about the relationship between types of learning and learning technologies. And we know, of course, three different types of learning. We know there're many different types of technology. But how do they fit together? In this activity, we'll look at the types of learning we're trying to get our primary students to do. And then we'll look at examples of how technology can enhance each different type. And at the end, you can try applying the definitions yourself. What examples do you have where you need technology to help students learn in different ways? Why consider types of learning? Well, let's look at the first reason. Different old technologies are good for different types of learning. We know that. So, digital technologies will be good for different types of learning as well. We know that books are, for example, are a wonderful way to learn, but we wouldn't expect children to learn just from books. We also use talk, discussion, practice, et cetera. They're all important. And in the same way, the web is a wonderful way to learn. But we wouldn't expect children to learn just from the web. We also want them to use technologies for communication, for making things, for experimenting, and so on. So we must also ask what are the types of learning we're trying to elicit from students? [BLANK_AUDIO] And here's the second reason. If we only ask what can we use this technology for in teaching and learning, then we go along with doing whatever it's good for. We don't sort out the problems we need as teachers to solve. So instead, we say, here's the teaching learning problem, now, how can technologies help? And in that way, we challenge the technology to help with the really important learning needs. [BLANK_AUDIO]. In the document, definitions of types of learning, you've these 6 different types of learning and how they're defined. These types of learning come from analyzing the many theories of learning and many research studies of how students learn in all education sectors not just in primary. The document refers to a book I wrote a couple of years ago, and this has a chapter on each type. But the main point of it was to say how do students learn, and then ask how can technology help. Not the other way around. [BLANK_AUDIO]. Well, we're not going to look at whole chapters here, just at these brief summaries. Learning through acquisition means listening to a presentational podcast, reading from books or websites, and watching demos or videos. Discussion means expressing ideas and questions and learners challenging and responding to the ideas and questions from the teacher, or from other students. Learning through investigation means students are exploring, comparing and critiquing information, using documents and resources that reflect the concepts and ideas being taught and examining what they say. Learning through practice, means students are adapting their actions to the task goal. And using feedback to improve their next action to achieve the goal. Learning through collaboration means using discussion and practice and production to create a shared output. So that all the learners together, are using both knowledge and inquiry. And learning through production means students are expressing what they learned as their own current conceptual understanding, and how they used it in practice. And of course, the best learning environment combines all these types of learning. [BLANK_AUDIO]. Now we look at how to interpret these learning types in relation to different kinds of technology. All the participants on this course now have a shared teaching and learning experience because we all know the example of the class learning about butterflies from the video. So what are the examples of learning through acquisition there? We saw them reading about butterflies. The children described watching a video about how butterflies get nectar from flowers. We saw them listening to the teacher's explanation to the whole class, as in the first picture here. And then we saw them watching their teacher show them how to use iMovie to make their video. So the lesson is a mix of different ways of learning through acquisition. And how did they do learning through discussion? Well for these children, they were answering questions in the whole class groups, or asking questions that the teacher would then reflect back to other children as in any normal primary class. The other discussion we saw was the children working together in small groups discussing what they were doing. And this is important because each child is asking and responding to questions much more than when they're all together in the one class. The technology class keeps them focused. So this is very similar to any primary classroom, small group activity except that an ICT task is the focus. But here we see how the digital technology is mixed in with really quite conventional primary classroom methods. Learning through investigation, or learning through inquiry, is what children have always done when they have to do a project and use books to find the information. And we heard them describing finding information from websites, and we saw them exploring the school garden to find flowers with nectar, to collect all the different kinds of information they needed. So they learn how to search for information, ideas and images from a new range of resources when they use the web. And of course the school is careful to give the children access only to safe websites. Learning through practice is one of the most powerful ways in which technology can enhance learning for children. Because it's interactive, it responds to their actions. We saw them using iMovie, which is quite a complex and sophisticated video editing tool. Unlike any ICT tool, when you do something wrong, you see the results. If you drag a picture to the wrong place, you can see what happens when you run your little video sequence. You can see what you do to have to put it right. So, once they've seen the demo, they can learn on their own, without the teacher there all the time, and gradually put together their own video. Now we have to be careful here. What are they actually learning about? Part of it is about butterflies, but part of it is about using a video editing tool. Now the video editor is very good at showing them for example, which picture they put their caption onto, and each child can make the judgment about whether that's correct. And they can fix it if it isn't. But the video editor can't tell them if they got the [UNKNOWN] sequence in the right order. Because it doesn't know anything about butterflies. For this, they need their teacher. That's one reason we have to be careful. Another reason we have to be careful in using technology in primary teaching, is that it can take a long time to make and edit a video. A lot of the time, the children are learning about media and ICT tools. Not about science. So rather than make a movie, it might be easier for them to present their work as a series of photos and record their voice over explaining them for example. So, the role of the teacher is absolutely crucial in making sure that the design of the lesson is appropriate and what the children learn is science, if that's the focus. The technology can help, but you'd have to make sure it helps. [BLANK_AUDIO]. This was a very collaborative class. All the children working together in small groups and each child working on something to contribute to their group. So, all the children are collecting information and creating a video of what they've learned from their research. Learning through collaboration is different from learning through discussion. If the children just talk to each other about the topic, it makes them think, and sometimes argue and challenge each other, but when they produce something together, like a picture or a diagram or a piece of writing, or in this case a video, they have to agree about what it is. And that makes it a much more challenging task. When they discuss, they can agree to differ. When they make something together, they have to agree on it. So learning through collaboration can be a very good way to get students to think a bit more carefully about how to express what they've learned. [BLANK_AUDIO]. Learning through production refers to the importance of the children sharing what they've learned. If they just made their project book, or their writing exercise or their maths problem just for themselves, and no teacher or anyone ever saw it, it wouldn't be very motivating. It would be hard to put very much effort into it. Without the teachers and without their peer's comments, the child has no way of knowing if they're learning well. Learning through production, means making something that shows what you've learned. So, while the children may be learning well through acquisition or discussion or collaboration and so on, at some point, they have to make sure they're ready to show this to others, especially their teacher. Knowing they have to do this is important, because it motivates them to try to do it well. And one of the great things about technology, is the variety of tools that we have that allow us to make things. It's not just writing and drawing, the conventional tools of the primary classroom, but now they can use all the tools the teacher uses. Word Processing, diagrams, pictures, spreadsheet models, videos, Powerpoint Presentations, online newspapers, websites, animations, games. We'll see several of these examples during the course and all of these are ways of enabling children to learn through production. [BLANK_AUDIO]. Here's the summary of all those different types of learning, and the different examples we saw on the video of both conventional and digital methods. So the video was showing how different types of ICT could be integrated with conventional primary classroom methods. Children need to be able to learn through all these different types of learning, with the teacher, with their peers, and on their own. Conventional methods provide good ways of all these different types of learning. We're now discovering all the good ways in which technology can help too. [BLANK_AUDIO]. Now it's your turn. When you start running a video, think about a topic for which you'd like to help children learn better. Then use the ICT and types of learning document to complete this table and show how different kinds of ICT could be used to support all these types of learning in one project on that topic for your children. And of course it'll be very apparent to you that the teacher plays a very important role in thinking about how best to design the use of technology. Given my learning and teaching goals, how can technology help? That's the question we always have to ask ourselves. [BLANK_AUDIO]
