Secondary school starts in most
countries at between 12 and 14 years. We start from the assumption that in the
secondary cycle it is possible to work on explicit pedagogical methods
with the students. At this point in his education, the student possesses sufficient
cognitive capacity about learning processes to enable teachers and students themselves
to build on educational practices introduced in earlier years. In other words, this
is the period for firming up learning/studying methods.
Moreover, the student
has attained sufficient social and intellectual capacity to consciously
integrate the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) –
particularly Internet – as a set of tools for new ways of learning. The article touches upon the three
dimensions of educational processes, i.e. “learning ”, “teaching” and “(educational) environment”, but
focuses on the action of learning. It starts from the notion that all educational
processes, particularly those said to be “student-centred”, should converge
towards good learning.
The problems of the digital divide and other
development divides must be mentioned at the outset. Clearly, the greater
challenge is in being able to educate all girls and boys in the world, which is
moreover a well-accepted right of those children. The concepts hereby proposed
imply prerequisites which are absent in too many cities and villages
of the world, and therefore are more directly applicable where basic
educational standards have already been met.
Yet quality education can and
should be sought everywhere, and not only in more affluent contexts. ICT
integration into educational processes should be part of the effort towards
improving them and making the most of available resources, even when these are meager
as in most developing countries. As Moore (2002) points out, ICT also provides a glimmer of hope towards achieving the
goal of quality universal education:“the developing country has to find
new methods that will dramatically improve both its children’s schooling and its
continuing education system. As in every other walk of modern life, the
answer to the challenge of education for economic development will lie, in
part, with technology.”
Learning how to Learn
If Internet changes educational
environments along with the social context, it makes sense that students will
need to adapt to these changes. This implies that the student should “ learn how to learn ” in the new
educational context. To be sure, knowing how to learn
is always one of the key objectives pursued in any proper pedagogical space.
But at the level of a given educational environment (and perhaps more widely in
the entire educational system), we could characterize the main pedagogical
challenge as figuring out institutionally how to best empower students to
learn. It is assumed that pedagogical techniques in the secondary cycle are
fully developed and formalized. While in the primary cycle the student has
followed certain learning patterns, it is in high school when such practices
can become explicit. The student is mature enough in cognitive terms to
understand that besides the usual subjects (maths, literature, history) she can
deliberately apply various learning methods. Most of us remember our best high
school teachers more for the methods they made us discover than for the specific
content they taught us.
ICTs (especially the Internet)
change the bases on which to focus learning more on the student/learner. This
includes both heteronomic and autonomous learning practices, of
which we can expect to have a mixture in secondary schools for some time. Heteronomic
learning is the traditional teacher-led learning process. ICTs can help teachers
stimulate their students to learn more and to learn better. These technologies allow
for high degrees of accumulation, breadth and compression of didactic presentation
materials, which offer new opportunities for teachers and
students. According to Peters (2002), teachers can take advantage at least
four new types of possibilities based on ICTs:
- · combination and integration of various methods of presentation;
- · improvement of multi sensorial instruction;
- · quantitative/qualitative extension of interactivity; and
- · improvement and expansion of support systems for the student.
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