Kahalagahan ng Paggamit ng Multimedia sa Pagtuturo

Sa panahong tinatawag na digital,  nagigigng mahalaga ang kakayahan at talento ng bawat indibidwal. Nagbabago na ang mga pamaraan sa pag-oorganisa ng mga bagay. Ang teknolohiya ay nakapag-aambag na rin sa inaasahang pagbabago sa larangan ng pagtuturo at pagkatuto. Ang tekholohiya ngayon ay nagbibigay na ng malawak na oportunidad para sa pagkatuto ng mga mag-aaral, lalo na ang access sa midya. Sa panahon na tinatawag nating “knowledge explosion”, ang guro sa makabagong panahon ay maaaring hindi kayang ibigay lahat ng kailangang hinahanap ng kanyang mga mag-aaral. Katulad ng maraming bagong kasanayan at kaalaman na kailangan sa curriculum development at pagtataya, mga bagong pedagohiya naman ang nalilikha habang ginagamit ng mga guro at mag-aaral ang teknolohiya sa pananaliksik at pagkatuto. Ang suliranin ukol sa umaapaw na impormasyon ay tototo kaya ang mga guro ay napipilitang mamili tungkol sa paggamit ng teknolohiya na maaaring magagamit sa pananaliksik at paghahanap ng mga inobatibong lapit at estratehiya sa pagtuturo. 

            Ayon kay Lardizabal (1995), ang pagtuturo ay isang proseso ng komunikasyon ng guro at mag-aaral. Ang pagtuturo ay hindi na nakasalig lamang sa berbal na komunikasyon ng guro at mag-aaral. Maraming kagamitan ang pagtuturo at pagkatuto. Ang kagamitan pampagtuturo o kagamitang instruksyonal ay anumang karanasan o bagay na ginagamit ng guro bilang pantulong sa paghahatid ng impormasyon, kasanayan, saloobin, palagay, katotohanan, pag-unawa at pagpapahalaga sa mga mag-aaral upang lalong maging konkreto, tunay, dinamiko at ganap ang pagkatuto.

            Sa paghahanda ng mga midyang instruksyonal ay kailangang alamin ang karakteristik at pangangailangan ng estudyante. Tiyakin ang layunin, balangkasin ang nilalaman, iplano ang suportang kakailanganin at isaalang-alang din ang mga materyal na paghahanguan. Sa pagsusulat, ihanay ng maayos ang mga ideya, pag-isipan at simulang buuin ang mga gawain at fidbak, humanap ng mga halimbawa at umisip ng mga grafiks.

            Sinasabi ngang walang kagamitang panturo ang maipapalit sa isang mabuting guro, ngunit isang katotohanang hindi maitatanggi na ang mabuting guro ay gumagamit ng mga kagamitang pampagtuturo tungo sa mabisang pagkatuto ng mga estudyante.

            Ayon kina Abad at Ruedas (2001), ang mga kagamitang pampagtuturo, tulad ng midyang instruksyonal ay nagbibigay ng kongkretong pundasyon sa pag-katuto, halimbawa:

• Nagbubunga ito ng wastong gawi sa pag-aaral;
• Nakagaganyak ito sa kawilihan ng mga mag-aaral sapagkat higit na napasisigla at napagagaan ang proseso ng pagtuturo at pagkatuto;
• Nagdudulot ito ng maayos, madali, makahulugan at mabisang pagtuturo at pagkatuto;
• Nag-aambag ito ng iba’t ibang karanasan sa mga mag-aaral tungo sa pagtatamo nila ng mga minimithing kaalaman, pagkakamit ng kasanayan at pagpapahalaga sa kanilang sarili at kapaligiran;
• Nagbibigay ito ng mga tunay at iba’t ibang kalagayan upang mapasigla ang pansariling gawain ng mag-aaral;
• Nagkakaroon ng tiwala sa sarili ang mag-aaral at guro sapagkat may direksyon ang pagtuturo at pagkatuto;
• Nagkakaroon din ang mga guro ng kawilihan, magaan at sistematikong pagtuturo;
• Nababawasan ang pagiging dominante ng guro sa pag-sasalitao pagtalakay ng aralin sa loob ng silid-aralan.

Gayunpaman, may mga limitasyon din ang paggamit ng multimedia sa silid-aralan tulad ng; kaamitang panteknolohiya (hard-ware at software), kakayahang panteknolohiya (para sa mga mag-aaral at mga guro) at oras o panahon na kakailanganin sa pagpaplano, pagdidisenyo, pag-linang at pagtatasa sa mga gawaing pang ultimedia.

Technology Will Make Collaboration Your Next Competitive Advantage

Editor’s note: Today we begin a new monthly topic in Business Impact at Technology Review: Collaboration Tools. Powerful software and widespread Internet connectivity are making it easier than ever for people to work together no matter where they happen to be. Throughout March we will look at the latest tools for collaboration within and between organizations. We’ll analyze why some technology-enabled collaborations work and why others don’t. We’ll explain why some collaboration tools have failed to prove useful to the employees meant to benefit from them. We’ll present case studies, profiles, and interviews that help you understand how to make the people in your organization more collaborative and more productive. 

Since the dawn of managerial capitalism, collaboration and work have almost always been synonymous. People need other people to realize their greatest impact, and innovation, perhaps the most valuable activity in business, depends critically on the kind of cross-pollination of ideas that collaboration enables.

But technology has changed how we collaborate, especially since the communications revolution began 150 years ago with the telegraph and the telephone. This wave of change continued with the commercialization of the fax machine in the 1970s and of e-mail in the 1980s. The last 20 years have brought a convergence of communications and computing technologies that has expanded the possibilities for technology-enabled collaboration, whether synchronous or asynchronous, proximal or distant. With voice mail, videoconferencing, instant messaging, chat forums, blogs, wikis, social networking, microblogging (through services such as Twitter and Foursquare), voice-over-IP, telepresence, and, of course, mobile communications and computing, never have we had so many ways to collaborate without having to be in the same place at the same time.

Technology-based platforms explicitly designed for collaboration arose in the late 1980s with the concept of “groupware” or “collaborative work environments.” These made it possible for people to join forces even though they were working in different places and in different time zones. Lotus Notes brought the notion to the corporate market at a time when business use of the Internet was still in its infancy. As the journalist David Kirkpatrick wrote in 1992, “If groupware really makes a difference in productivity long term, the very definition of an office may change.” With admirable prescience, he noted: “You will be able to work efficiently as a member of a group wherever you have your computer. As computers become smaller and more powerful, that will mean anywhere.”

That prediction has become reality, especially since the recent financial downturn. As businesses cut back on workers and resources, the number of professionals who defined themselves as freelancers increased to 30 million in the United States alone, and many of them turned to social-networking sites, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, to build their businesses. Many people who remained employed used the same strategies as an insurance policy against the next reduction in force. They also compensated for leaner IT budgets by supplying their own hardware, leading to new acronyms such as BYOD (“bring your own device”) and BYOC (“bring your own computer”). In fact, Kraft Foods “coöpted” employee-owned smart phones and tablets, explicitly welcoming and supporting “third-party” devices not directly purchased by the company.

Such policies, in turn, created a new meaning for BYOC: “bring your own culture.” Why? Workers equipped with their own smart phones and notebooks became accustomed to using those devices in whatever ways they chose. They demanded freedom of access to rich media websites (like YouTube), social-networking platforms, and certain content providers (such as WikiLeaks and publishers of its documents, like the New York Times and CNN.com) that many corporations and government entities had blocked for reasons of bandwidth costs, data protection, and corporate security. One senior Dell executive I’ve come across argued that if he was going to spend 60 to 80 hours a week at work, the company had no business deeming any content on the Web off limits. The corporate firewall, designed to make a stark distinction between internal and external information resources, was an artifact of a bygone era. The Dell executive prevailed.

As we’ll see in this month’s articles, interviews, and case studies in Business Impact, network-enabled collaboration both within and between firms is changing work in fundamental ways.

To fuel this revolution, established companies and startups are offering tools and platforms that support ever more powerful means of collaboration. Their business propositions are predicated on Metcalfe’s Law: as linkages among individuals increase arithmetically, collaboration as a result of those linkages rises in value geometrically. That’s why many companies seeking to accelerate the pace of innovation turn to open innovation.