An information system that schools, universities, and institutions can use for teaching (only online or supporting traditional teaching) which can have the following features (all together or individually): a) be a content management system (CMS), guaranteeing the access to didactic materials for the students; b) be a learning management system (LMS), where the use of learning objects makes easier the learning of a given topic; c) be a computer-supported collaborative learning system (CSCLS), which makes easier the use of collaborative and situated teaching/learning strategies; and d) build a virtual community of students, tutors, and professors using knowledge management (KM) strategies.
Published in Chapter:
Between Tradition and Innovation in ICT and Teaching
Antonio Cartelli (University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Italy)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 7
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-198-8.ch026
Abstract
During the past few decades, the expanded use of PCs and the Internet introduced many changes in human activities and cooperated in the transformation process leading from the industrial society to the knowledge society. Among other things, the above instruments played a special role in education, and two main phases can be easily recognized: the former one where computing and ICT were mostly used to enhance individuals’ learning features (i.e., teachers mainly had the role of educational worker: planning, controlling and evaluating students’ learning processes); the latter one, more recent and centered on ICT use, where teachers had to adopt situated and collaborative learning strategies, build communities of learners (CoLs), organize students’ work for enhancing problem finding and solving, while helping the development of their ZPDs (zones of proximal development, meaning individuals’ cognitive areas marked by the distance between the subject’s knowledge/experience in a given field and the same knowledge/experience in the best skilled individuals in the community). The above transformation modified not only teachers’ functions, but also the whole school environment and the students’ role within it. The same ICT will help teachers and professors in finding solutions to learning problems by giving them new instruments for the analysis and continuous monitoring of students’ learning processes.