As I read through Barbara Grabowski's paper, "Information, instruction, and learning: A hypermedia perspective" I realized the difficulty in taking the information (curriculum) that we as teachers need to cover, turning that into instruction, and finally having it come across in a way that a student will be able to successfully learn.
After several years of teaching, I know that this is a difficult task, what I did not realize was that it can be looked at and effectively implemented using a systems theory approach.
Grabowski speaks about how we need to sequence instructional objectives with the read/write web, which she calls "hypertext" or "hypermedia". She breaks down the three major issues with hypertext learning to "motivational, navigation, and cognitive"(Grabowski p162). It has been my experience that the hardest of the three to successfully manage is the motivation of the learners. Some students are not intrinsically motivated to do well in school and we, as teachers must find an external way to motivate them to succeed. The question that I starting tackling last year was, how do we motivate students who do not see the value in educational success?
First, as educators we must show them how they have already been successful to build them up so they will be ready for new challenges. Second, we must prepare them to succeed and fail in whatever they are undertaking. We can not have our students believe that everything should be easy. Finally we must apply these ideas to "hyper-media based information systems". We have to show students the value of these systems and work on their motivation that they will try and succeed and they may also try and fail, but with persistence and the expectation of a challenge they can be successful for life.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Motivation really is an important issue in education. My hope is that the Read (By the whole WORLD!) Write (By YOU!) Web offers intrinsic motivation towards learning. Because if there is one thing anyone does not want to do, it's be portrayed negatively in public forums. On the other hand, there are a select few that are motivated to be funny in public forums (Watch out for those).
We can utilize the greatest methods, strategies, and systematic resources in our lessons, but if we can't motivate the kids to produce work they're proud of; navigation and cognition are hyperdone.
The concept of motivation is a very tricky one. How do you motivate students that seemed at times to unmotivatable (is that a word?). If the usual tactics to motivate our students are seeming to lose their luster, than technology may be a way to bridge the gap. If students are having trouble grasping the importance of what they are being taught, then maybe they can get motivated by using technology. This can hopefully appease their need for instant gratification. In the process, maybe they could learn more going through this experience, than one that is more teacher-centered.
Post a Comment