☞Higher Thinking Skills through IT-Based☜

Key Elements of a constructivist approach:

• The teacher creating the learning environment.
• The teacher giving students the tool
• The teacher facilitating learning.

The four IT-based projects conducive to develop higher thinking skills and creativity among learners.

✎RESOURCE-BASED PROJECTS

• Resource-based learning is student-centered. Students are actively involved and more accountable for their own learning.

The teacher steps out of the traditional role of being an context expert and information provider, and instead lets the students find their own facts and information.The general flows of events in resource-based projects are:

• The teacher determines the topic for the examination of class.
• The teacher presents the problem to the class.
• The students find information on the problem/questions.
• Students organize their information in response to the problem/questions.

TRADITIONAL VS RESOURCE-BASED LEARNING

Traditional learning model	Resource-based learning model
Teacher is expert and information provides	Teacher is a guide and facilitator
Textbook is key source of information	Sources are varied(print, video. Internet, etc.)
Focus on facts Information is packaged In neat parcels	Focus on learning inquiry, quest, or discovery
The product is the be-all and end-all of learning	Emphasis on process
Assessment is quantitative	Assessment is quantitative and qualitative.

✎SIMPLE CREATION

Three kinds of skills/abilities:

• Analyzing- distinguishing similarities and differences/ seeing the project as a problem to be solved.
• Synthesizing- making spontaneous connections among ideas, does generating interesting or new ideas.
• Promoting- selling of a new ideas to allow the public to test the ideas themselves.

The five key task to develop creativity:

• Define the task- clarify the goal of the completed project to the student.
• Brainstorm- the students themselves will be allowed to generate their own ideas on the project. Rather than shoot down ideas, the teacher encourages ideas exchange.
• Judge the ideas- the students themselves make an appraisal for or against any idea. Only when students are completely off check should the teacher intervene.
• Act- the students do their work with the teacher a facilitator.
• Adopt flexibility- the students should be allowed to shift gears and not follow an action path rigidly.

✎GUIDED HYPERMEDIA PROJECTS

The production of self-made multimedia projects can be approached into different ways:

• Instructive tools- such as in the production by students of a power point presentation of a selective topic. 
• Constructive tools- such as when students do a multi-media presentation (with text, graphs, photos, audio narration, interviews, video clips, etc. to simulate a television news show.

✎WEB-BASED PROJECTS

Students can be made to create and post web pages on a given topic. But creating new pages, even single page web pages, maybe tool sophisticated and time consuming fort the average student. 

It should be said, however, that posting of web pages in the Internet allows the students (now the web page creator) a wider audience. They can also be linked with other related sites in the Internet. But as of now, this creativity project maybe to ambitious as a tool in the teaching-learning process.

✎Reflection:

• As the technology boost every second, teacher also need to improve. The FOUR IT-based Projects will  help us to bring out the skills, creativity and knowledge of our students and the interaction in classroom will be changed. We need to think the best way to catch their attention  because if we motivate them well we can achieve the outcome that we expected.
• We all know that bookish teacher is boring. Teachers in this century need to upgrade their way of teaching. You will notice that if we have a gadgets or catchy graphics, sounds and material they will be interested. 
• Let them move! We need to let them do the task in their own way because in that case they can easily understand the lesson if we let them practice and engage in a active learning process. 

“Students shouldn't be focused on acquiring information or submitting to other people’s ideas; education should be concerned with constructing new knowledge.”