THE FOUR IT-BASED PROJECTS CONDUCIVE TO DEVELOP HIGHER THINKING SKILLS AND CREATIVITY AMONG LEARNERS

1. RESOURCE BASED PROJECTS

• The teacher steps out of the traditional role of being an content expert and information provider, and instead lets students find their own facts and information.
• The general flow of events in these projects are:

  1. The teacher determines the topic for the examination of the class. (e.g definition of a "man")

  2. The teacher presents the problem to the class.

  3. The student find information in response to the problems or questions.

• The central principle is to make students go beyond the textbook and curriculum materials. Students also encouraged to go to the library , particularly to the modern extension of the modern library, the internet.
• Furthermore, the inquiry-based or discovery approach is given importance in resource-based projects.This requires the students, individually or cooperatively with members of his group, relate gathered information to the real world.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TRADITIONAL AND RESOURCE-BASED LEARNING APPROACH TO INSTRUCTION.

TRADITIONAL LEARNING MODEL                RESOURCE-BASED LEARNING MODEL

• Teacher is expert and information provider.                     Teacher is a guide and facilitator
• Textbook is the key of source                                      Source are varied (print, video, internet, etc..)
• Focus on facts information is packaged in neat parcels   Focus on learning inquiry/ quest/ discovery
• The product is the be-all and end-all of learning.            Emphasis on process
• Assesment is quantitative.                         Assessment is quantitative and qualitative.

2. SIMPLE CREATIONS

• Students can also be assigned to create their software materials to supplement the need and relevant and effective materials.
• There are available software materials such as creative writer (by Microsoft), on writing, KidWork Deluxe (by Davidson) on drawing and painting, and MediaWeave (by Humanities software) on multimedia.
• Creating is more consonant with planning , making, assembling, designing or building.
• Creativity is said to combine three kind of skills or abilities:
• Analyzing- distinguishing similarities and differences/ seeing the project as a problem to be solved.    
• Synthesizing- making spontaneous connections among ideas, thus generating interesting or new ideas.
• Promoting- selling of new ideas to allow the public to test the ideas themselves.        

• To develop the creativity, the following are the five keys tasks may be recommended:

    1. Define the task

    2. Brainstorm

    3. Judge the ideas

    4. Act

    5. Adopt Flexibility

3. Guided Hypermedia Projects

• The production of self-made multimedia projects can be approaches in two different ways:

1. As an instructive tool, such as in the production by students of a power- point presentation.

2. As a communication tool, such as when students do a multimedia presentation ( with text, graphs, photos, audio, narration, interviews, video clips, etc. to stimulate a television news show.

• HYPER STUDIO ( by Roger Wagner Productions) software is an example of a multimedia software.

4. Web -Based Projects

• Students can be made create and post web pages on a given topic. But creating web pages, even single page web pages may be too sophisticated and time consuming for the average student.

Source: EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY 2
Author: PAZ LUCIDO, Ph. D
Pages: 46-54