Lesson 12: Information technology in Support of Student-Centered Learning

The idea of students centered learning is not a recent idea. In fact, as early as the 20^th century, educational educators such as John Dewey argued for a highly active and individualized pedagogical methods which place the students at the center of the teaching-learning process.

It may be observe that after spending so many minutes in lesson presentation and class management, students can get restless and fidgety. Often enough, the teacher has to misbehavior in class as students starts to talk among themselves or simply stare away in lack of attention. To prevent this situation, teachers often make students take time to work individually on worksheets can help the situation.

The Traditional Classroom

         It may be observed that classroom are usually arranged with neat columns and rows of student chairs, while the teacher stands in front of the classroom or sits behind his desk. This situation is necessitated by the need to maintain classroom discipline, also to allow the teacher to control classroom activities through lecture presentation and teacher-led discussion.

The SCL Classroom

          In industrialize societies we find knowledge-based economies in which workers depend on information that can be accessed through information and communication technologies (ICT's). Desiring to gain effectiveness, efficiency and economy in administration and instruction, schools in these developed economies have also adopted the support of ICT's. Their students have now become active not passive learners, who can interact with other learners, demonstrating independence and self-awareness in the learning process.

Generally the new school classroom environment is characterized by student individually or in groups:

• Performing computer word processing for text or graph presentations
• Preparing power-point presentation
• Searching for information on the Internet
• Brainstorming on ideas, problems and project plans
• As needed, the teacher facilitating instruction, also giving individualized instruction to serve individual needs.

Most students had experience doing some research in the internet cafe and prepared presentation in MS PowerPoint to be presented in class and by doing such things students creativity and knowledge in the topic is tested and because they are the one doing this, the level of retention is high compared to the lecture method being used in the class. And also, through this students are becoming dependent on themselves and not to the teacher.

In the actual field of teaching, to be able to get the interest of the students, it is very important to make the class interactive as much as possible and teacher must vary his/her own teaching strategies to avoid boredom that suffocates every learner. It has been known that classes are becoming productive because technology is already integrated in teaching, those passive learners will become an active learners and this is done by doing activities wherein students will be the one who are going to create their own outputs, they are allowed to showcase their abilities and skills.

Most school nowadays have their own computer room and computer literacy subject as part of their instructions. But because of the demands of the society students nowadays are computer literate and they are somewhat more advance compared to the older generations or even to their teachers. However, because of the presence of the computer, learning ca be made easy and fun because students can freely research in advance and search the net for more additional information but as a teacher we must see to it that the information from the internet were genuine because the WWW is a very big gamble, it can offer you with so many things without the assurance of its authenticity.