Spontaneous learning

Vygotsky sees the role of schooled learning as that of an arbiter for the human culture and all its associated knowledge, and the approaching learners. Here, teachers should aim to provide the ideal merger of simplified scientific concepts with spontaneous learning experiences, thereby enhancing the learning process and outcomes (read ‘achievements’) for the learners. The teacher’s main role here is to select the concepts, methods and occasions for the enabling of these goals.

Thus, for those of us both in ICT as well as in a schooled learning environment, it emerges that ICT isn’t here to reduce the role of the teacher, or simply to replace the old with new, but rather can provide enhancement andgreater accuracy to our efforts in linking the types of learning exposed here. This especially in light of the fact that the two types of learning are seen as integral to each other. ICT should then be recognized as being able to play a major role towards such an effort.

    It therefore comes to us to embrace ICT and the ‘power tools’ it possesses. We would need to weld it into our schemes to reinforce concepts such as multiple modes of presentation, seeing a concept at work (hands on or vicariously), incidental teaching, and providing more immediate real-world feedback for learners and teachers. This may just lead us into a more collaborative, learner centred theatre of operations, a learning community which, in a wider role, enhances learning efficiently while maximizing the use of slender resources on the ground. The potential for the the transformation of present day classrooms into more vibrant centres of learning has reared its head.

As a whole, ICT can be seen here as providing the learners with the tools that help them to learn as themselves in, basically, almost any environment we wish, or which we wish to create.