Análisis microbiológico del chile jalapeño en campo

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EDU258 - COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION METHODS

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EDU258 - COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION METHODS

may be used effectively not only in schools but also in less formal environments such as homes, offices, museums and community centres. They can greatly help and supplement human teachers, but may be quite effective even in the absence of such teachers. Computers can potentially make excellent instructions available to students. The instruction prepared for delivery by computers can be repeatedly used, readily modified and cumulatively improved to remedy observed deficiencies or to reflect changing circumstances.

The increasingly widespread availability of computers is likely to foster greater popular interest in their use and thus enhance people‘s motivation to understand the quantitative and analytical modes of the things required for their effective use. Such motivation can potentially be exploited by deliberately designing computers to be readily usable by people in all walks of life, to provide such people with appealing opportunities to engage in quantitative thinking, and thus to promote greater mathematical and scientific literacy.

Computers can greatly facilitate many of the burdensome record-keeping and administrative tasks carried out by teachers.

Tools for educational research

Computers can be powerful research tools in education. The recent past has seen very fruitful applications of computers in the basic studies of human thought processes relevant to education.

Computers, available as tools for students, can help them carry out many relatively simple tasks which they traditionally spent years learning to do unaided (e.g. making arithmetical computations, manipulating symbolic expressions in algebra, implementing the syntax rule in complex programming). Various resulting implications may usefully be explored. Computers can be used to design learning environments that can foster student learning even in the absence of any formal instruction. Such learning environments have been designed for various educational levels (e.g. LOGO computer language and turtle geometry for use by quite young children, computer environments for learning to troubleshoot electronic circuits, and others).

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EDU258 - COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION METHODS

Computers can provide learning environments where students have access to real data (e.g. data about populations and demographic trends, and economic data about various countries) and can they use computers to facilitate computations with such data. Besides, such learning environments could also be exploited to teach students useful knowledge about modern computer-implemented databases and techniques needed to work with such databases. Computers can be very profitably used to create learning environments ‘simulating laboratory situations. Such laboratories may simulate real situations that might be encountered in an actual laboratory.

However, the simulation has the following advantages: It is usually much less expensive than a real laboratory. It allows the quick exploration of many possibilities and the systematic variation of many relevant parameters; it allows active exploration without danger or harm to students; and it allows students to focus their attention on centrally important issues without being distracted by many logical details of real experiments. Effective learning is greatly fostered when students are actively involved and learn by doing.

Computers also permit the design of learning environments that help students acquire mental models to deal with complex phenomena or devices. Computer tools, such as word processors, spreadsheets and programming languages can be used by students for writing activities, for entering and manipulating data obtained in science and social studies activities, or for exploring number patterns. Each computer software tool has a variety of uses in the classroom. Today, through the use of technology tools, students can create their own learning micro-worlds as well as share data and concepts with the global community.

Traditionally, human teachers in face-to-face contact have implemented most educational tasks, predominantly with students, even when the teachers faced students in large classes and had little time to give them individual attention. But modern information technologies permit educational tasks to be approached from a more efficacious point of view. Effective education can be provided not only by human teachers but also by books, movies, audio and video

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technologies, and computers acting as private non-human tutors in other capacities.

Each of these instructional means, including the human teachers, has some unique strength and some appreciable limitations. However, better educational effectiveness can be realized by careful design, which uses an optimum combination of such instructional means to attain desired educational goals. Such an instructional design would judiciously aim to exploit the unique capabilities for each instruction means and try to minimize its limitations.

Human teachers would then be used to maximum advantage in those situations where their unique capabilities are most valuable. Education would then become less synonymous with schooling, with more education effectively provided in homes and other information setting. Therefore, now that we have the technology tools that can promote alternative learning strategies, we will produce citizens who are equipped academically to be educated participants in today‘s and tomorrow‘s world.

But, it seems apparent that school system sometimes buy computers in response to parental pressures or because they want to gain prestige. They think that by this; they would be said to be at the forefront of new trends. Therefore, their reason for acquiring computers is not because they have a vision of the educational goals the computers will help them achieve or of how the change process can be handled in a way that maximizes the potential benefits of using microcomputers in instruction while minimizing negative effects. The historical innovations in education have revealed that changes must not be undertaken just for change‘s sake.

It is an error to yield to the temptation of acquiring technology without planning for its use.

In fact many innovations introduced in schools have failed, because teachers were not

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prepared ahead of the introduction of such innovation. The computer is neither a complete teacher nor a panacea for educational problems. The teacher clearly has a central role in assuring that Computer-Assisted Instruction is balanced by one kind of experiences.

The feverish rush towards acquiring microcomputers means that many teachers now have computers available to them as tools which they have little or no k no w le d g e a bo u t .

Further, the fact that major expenditures are being made on computer hardware at a time when the finances of many schools are at a low ebb has led many systems to skimp on teacher training and support services. However, it is important to make teachers more familiar with computers and their use. Teachers must know some of the potentialities and limitations of computers. They must also be encouraged to use it to teach and also upgrade their level of computer literacy above that of their students.

The education of teachers should make them adequately knowledgeable about the educational application of computers. They should also be well informed about new educational approaches made possible by computers and recent insights into human thought processes, and about new educational goals needed to prepare students to function in a technological society. Computers should also be exploited as teaching tools in the actual education of teachers. This might not only improve the education of teachers, but also make them directly familiar with the educational applications of computers.

SELF ASSESSMENT EXERCISES 2 List five teaching capacities of computer.

4.0 CONCLUSION

In this Unit you ought to have learnt that computer use in schools has become widespread,

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from primary schools through the university level and in some preschool programs; and that computers can be a powerful tool in a teacher‘s repertoire. Software has gradually improved in quality and variety and is now available for all subject areas and grade levels. The newer software permits a variety of student responses, with branching to appropriate levels of instruction based on the correctness of students ‘responses. Similarly, computers can greatly expand the types of instruction received by students; improve on current teaching modes, and free teachers to increase their personal attention to students. Computers have some unique teaching capabilities that can be practically exploited to achieve great educational effectiveness. They provide powerful intellectual tools for calculation, for the word processing involved in writing, for designing some technological artifacts or artistic creations. Computers can be used to design special learning environments that can significantly student leaning foster, even with the absence of any formal instruction. However, the education of teachers should make them adequately knowledgeable about the educational application of computers.

5.0 SUMMARY

The computer has the potential to become education‘s single most useful teaching and learning tool.

There is no doubt that computers can greatly expand the types of instruction received by students; improve on current teaching modes, and free teachers to increase their personal attention to students. Effective learning is greatly fostered when students are actively and learn by doing. Computers also permit the design of learning environments that help students acquire mental models to deal with complex phenomena or devices. The capacity of computers notwithstanding, the education of teachers should make them adequately knowledgeable about the educational application of computers.

6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT

1. What will you consider to be the challenges posed by computer to the teaching and learning processes?

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EDU258 - COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION METHODS 2. State three advantages of the use of computers in education 3. List and discuss three capacity of computers in education.

7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READINGS

Olatokun, W., Agbonlahor, R., Adeniran, S., and Olatunji, A. (2007). Computer Studies for Schools, Ibadan: HEBN Publish Plc.

Orimolade, J. S. (2004). College Computer Science.Lagos: Data Analysis and Processing Services Roy D .P. (2005). Educational Communication and Technology. Retrieved on 29th

September, 2010 from http://halshs.archives- ouvertes.fr/docs/00/19/05/47/PDF/A41_Pea_87b.pdf

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UNIT 2 Mode of Computer Lesson Presentation