Changing the Way
Learning Takes Place
Rae Anne Carman
With all of the learning theories and techniques for designing and delivering instruction, it is easy to loose the original goal: to design instruction that helps people to learn. I became fascinated with Papert's ideas that by programing a computer children actually change the way learning takes place. The programming is not the ends, but rather the means by which students will learn other content, and they will do so by building intellectual models and by forming relationships with other deep ideas and concepts.
By using various cognitive learning theories with the constructivist learning theory, I feel that any activities that create opportunities for students to become teachers, to experience information both verbally and visually, will create additional schemata in a learners long term memory and will therefore assist encoding and recall. Scripting with HyperCard is the means by which the other memory strategies, the other learning theories are incorporated into an overall curriculum.
Further, since HyperCard allows students to write and play music, record voices and songs, play movies, animate as well as evaluate user input, activities that allow students to learn and to demonstrate learning using multiple intelligences are incorporated into the tool.
Again, I think it is important to note that HyperCard is merely the tool. An instructional expert, a teacher, is required to design the instruction using the best techniques--Gagnés 9 events and the 4MAT system, appropriate objectives must be selected and assessment applied. HyperCard is not the only tool but another tool to facilitate learning. And if Papert is right, a tool that can actually change the way all other learning takes places.