forrja: Implications for IT Management

 Implications for IT Management

introduction

It was concluded in the previous section that the Standard Model is being replaced, however, it is anticipated that both the Standard Model and its alternatives will organize teaching and learning into the future. 

It follows that IT managers will be responsible to ensure that the systems they create and sustain have 

the capacity and functionality to support both types of teaching and learning. 

1- The Standard Model 

Of education is dominated by instructionism in which an expert (the teacher) defines the content to be studied, the manner and order in which it is going to be experienced, and finally determines the extent to which each student has learned it.

 While some associate instructionism with the leaners being passive recipients of information, Burton, Moore, and Magliaro (2004) suggested instruction can provide a structure for approaching a complex body of knowledge and also for maintaining knowledge. 

2- Reif (2008) identified several 

Factors that make instruction effective including articulating very clear goals; the inclusion of explicit and implicit guidance, support, and feedback that can be individualized; and providing timely and appropriate feedback.

3- Instruction is amenable 

To deconstruction into several components: goals, a predictable path through known content, and clear determination of outcomes, along with appropriate feedback. These are all clearly definable and knowable before the instruction begins, thus instruction amenable to technology-based delivery. 

4- Reif (2008) concluded, 

“Computers are well suited for instructional purposes because they provide a dynamic medium that can not only convey information in visual and auditory forms, but can also flexibly interact with users so as to respond to their actions” (p. 428). Instructionism has been used to create a variety of digital educational materials. 

5- This list includes arcade-style

Games designed to teach mathematics skills, spelling words, typing skills, and similar lessons; intelligent tutoring systems for individualized lessons (e.g. test preparation systems); and simulations, which are designed to make the instructional activity more context-rich than arcade-style games typically are. 

Bowers (1988) criticized these designs as “students encounter a one-dimensional world of objective data” (p. 34), and he concluded the prejudices and biases of the programmers exert strong and perhaps unintentional effects on the lessons learned. 

6- When they are aware of these 

Limitations and take steps to minimize their influence on the materials, instructional designers can create very effective instructional materials (for appropriate purposes) by the judicious application of technologies.

Efficacious IT managers will build systems that can be used to deliver instruction by ensuring:

• Students can access appropriate instructional materials including both locally installed programs and web-based media;

• Teachers have resources for creating instructional materials; 

• Instructional materials are accessible to those students who have disabilities;

• Teachers have access to easy-to-use systems for managing instructional resources they create and that they find. This can include both local copies of files and online repositories.

7- One of the reports that emerged from the comprehensive 

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media project was The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age (Davidson & Goldberg, 2009). In that book, 10 characteristics of learning in the digital age are proposed (see table 1.1). 

The authors observed, “Digital technologies increasingly enable and encourage social networking and interactive, collaborative engagements, including those implicating and impacting learning” (Davidson & Goldberg, 2009, p. 24). 

They further confirm a commitment to developing alternatives to the Standard Model of education noting learners will become more participatory in virtual environments “where they share ideas, comment on one another’s projects, and plan, design, implement, advance, or simply discuss their practices, goals or ideas together” (p. 12). 

As the pillars are more completely implemented in a community, the implications for teaching and learning as well as professional learning become more pressing.

8- Information technology in classrooms. 

Todd Oppenheimer (2003) who generally argues for avoiding technology in his book The Flickering Mind observed computers “can be effective when they are used only as needed, when students are at the right age or them, and when they are kept in their place” (p. 394). 

David Jonassen, a scholar who studied educational technology for decades and was recognized as a leader in the field, differentiated active learning in which technology is used to “engage learners, in representing, manipulating, and reflecting on what they know,” from passive learning in which students used technology for “reproducing what someone tells them” (2000, p. 10).

9- We know schools are designed for the purpose 

Of enabling and encouraging young people to fully engage with information technology so they can participate in the economic, political, and cultural life of society. The curriculum comprises those skills and that knowledge that is necessary for this goal. It is expected the complexity of society’s 

IT will be reflected in the strategic goals articulated by school leaders and the curriculum and instruction designed to achieve those goals. For the digital generations, the process of revising curriculum and instruction is further complicated by the changing nature of information technology in the society. 

10- Plato, we saw previously

Argued against the incorporation of reading and writing into schools. One’s perception of changing information technology depends on the direction from which oneperceives the change. 

Older generations grew up using the information technology that is being replaced tend to perceive the arrival of IT and the transition in schooling associated with the IT in a negative manner. For them, using new information technology is degrading human cognition and students are not being taught the skills and knowledge that they value and that were necessary for their generation. 

Conclusion

Younger generations perceive the emerging information technology as natural to their future, and they tend to adopt the technologies and become comfortable with emerging information and technologies. The challenge for efficacious IT managers is to negotiate the many factors that affect the transition.