Technology: Boon or Bane?

“Technology is in our hands. We can

use it to build or destroy.”
 In Education technology is Bane when:

• The learner is made to accept Gospel truth

information they get from the internet.
• The learner surfs the Internet for
pornography.
• The learner has an uncritical mind on
images floating on televisions and
computers that represent modernity and
progress.

Learning Episode Technology: Boon or Bane?

 :
• The TV makes the learner a mere
spectator not an active participant in the
drama of life.
• The learner gets glued to his computer for
computer-assisted instruction unmindful
of the world and so fails to develop the
ability to relate to others.
• We make use of the Internet to do
character assassination of people whom
we hardly like.

Learning Episode Technology: Boon or Bane?

 :

• Because of our cell phone, we spend

most of our time in the classroom or in
our workplace texting.
• We use overuse and abuse TV or film
viewing as a strategy to kill time

Learning Episode Technology: Boon or Bane?

The Roles of Educational
Technology in Learning
“Technology makes the world a new
place.”
 Roles of Technology in Learning
• As tools support knowledge construction: for
representing learners’ ideas, understandings
and beliefs for producing organized,
multimedia knowledge bases by learners
• As information vehicles for exploring
knowledge to support learning-by-
constructing: for accessing needed
information for comparing perspectives,
beliefs and world views

Learning Episode The Roles of Educational Technology

in Learning
• As context to support learning-by-doing: for
representing and simulating meaningful real-
world problems, situations and context, for
representing beliefs, perspectives, arguments
and stories of others, for defining a safe,
controllable problem space for student thinking.
• As a social medium to support learning by
conversing: for collaboration with others, for
discussing, arguing and building consensus
among members of a community, for
supporting discourse among knowledge-
building communities
Learning Episode The Roles of Educational Technology
in Learning
As intellectual partner to support learning-by-
reflecting:
• For helping learners to articulate and represent
what they know
• For reflecting on what they have learned and
how they come to know it
• For supporting learners internal negotiations and
meaning making
• For constructing personal representations of
meaning for supporting mindful thinking

Learning Episode The Roles of Educational Technology

in Learning