Learning and Teaching with Technology (338-0-20)
Instructors
Paula Kay Hooper
Meeting Info
Annenberg Hall 101: Fri 2:00PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
Technological innovation has become an integral part of everyday life. All digital tools (i.e.
programming/coding, robotics, social media, VR/AR, games, and digital design fabrication) have the
potential to be used to help learners develop their own understandings of subject-matter. But
technology is not always used in ways that improve experiences of learning and teaching. The lack of
realizing this potential is often due to limited views of learning that are embedded in the design and
use of new technologies. In this course, we will explore views of learning that can be used to realize
the promises and avoid the pitfalls that technological innovations can hold for learning in both informal
and formal settings.
This course is based on the premise that exploring learning with technology will allow us to deepen
our understanding of how to effectively teach with technology. As educators, researchers and
designers, we need our understandings of technology and its uses to be connected to the theories of
learning that are enacted in our practice whether we make them explicit or not. To this end, we will
examine how combinations of cognitive, sociocultural and ecological theories enable us to articulate
understandings of learning that will improve our pedagogical practice. We will explore the design of
activities using technologies that encourage teachers to recognize and value the multiple pathways
that learners travel to make sense of new ideas. These designs also provide opportunities for multiple
avenues of research related to learning and teaching.
The course is designed to immerse students in the use of technological tools for learning and the
design of projects for learning with various technologies. Projects, readings and writing in various
genres are intended to help students to reflect on their own learning and the learning of others.
Course work is also designed to provide opportunities to try out, analyze and interpret various
approaches to teaching with technologies. The goal is to develop perspectives on learning and
teaching with technology that enable both pre-service teachers and emerging learning scientists to
create learning environments that support learners in coming to understand academic ideas,
themselves, and their social/cultural contexts.
For example, we will look beyond the popular assumption that coding is a good skill for all children as
preparation for future economic expansion and workforce development. We will give greater attention
to deeper meanings and purposes of coding. We will consider what computational thinking can be
when educators attend to the new ways learners can make sense of ideas and phenomena using
computational tools. The kinds of questions that emerge from the work in this class include: How can
geometry be explored and understood differently with computational tools as opposed to traditional
pedagogical approaches? How can engaging in inquiry using sensing devices help learners to
expand their sense of possibility for what they can make, learn and do? How does the cultural context
of learning inform how technology can be taken up to support learning? What new purposes and
meanings for technology use might young people generate for themselves?