More VELS meandering.

I would like to return to the VELS statement:


1. ICT provides a rich and flexible learner-centred environment in which students can experiment and take risks when developing new understanding.


Taking risks is something important in education and learning. If students are not taking risks they are not in their optimal learning zone. We've been told repeatedly in our classes that students learn best when tehy are in the 50:50 zone, where if thy did a test they would get 50% correct. But students are trained to be afraid to provide an answer that may be wrong. It can be hard to try and articulate an answer if there is a good chance you will be mocked by classmates, or told you are incorrect/not quite there yet by the teacher.


While you could attempt to remove the stigma of incorrect guesses/answers, this is imprecise and doomed to never achieve complete success. So you need to find other ways to get students to put forward ideas, to test their ideas out without fear of ridicule. Some techniques would include group work or assessment that makes clear they will not be penalised for trying things out. Still it is making students try out ideas or write down ideas in front of their peers and teachers. But ICT potentially offers another way.


Using ICT can take attention away and permanence away from students articulated ideas. If students are given a space in which to try out ideas, to express their understanding without frightening outcomes, but still feedback, they are going to experience fewer negative feelings about participating. There is more room for feedback via automated systems. The computer is not a person and so there is less blame/shame/attention. More feedback and less personalised feedback can only benefit students. (there is a question here: should students should learn how to cope with expressing their ideas in public? I think that this would be an ideal goal, and efforts should be made in a classroom to allow it to happen, but ICT use allows for respite from this kind of attention to students and their responses. It also can allow for more individual participation.)


For individual/small group tasks I think it is clear to see that student participation in giving/trying answers is increased by using ICT.  Experiments and risk galore! Educational benefit +
The trick is then in working out how to integrate the use of ICT in meaningful ways to the curriculum.