Changes in The Students' Learning

After more than 10 years of studying, I have to be honest and say that only when I step into the world of University do I get to use technology as my tool for learning. Technology, had always been an unknown territory that I was always curious to explore but never got the chance to do it.

But time has changed everything now. Today's young learners however tends to take these opportunity for granted. While we were used to the thirst for technological use in our learning before, they can easily access to its use as the central of their educational purposes, communications and daily needs. The questions now, is how we as teachers should guide the students to make use of the available technology around them to the max!

Changes in Students' Learning

Learning is no longer bordered by the four walls of the classroom, but borderless and unlimited. Students becoming active learners who initiates learning and play a role in active thinking about informations and knowledge that they are to learn.

With the access to the internet, students can gather just about any informations right on their very fingertips. Students will become more and more a teacher of their own learning. Learning is no longer the traditional - teachers as input, learners as receiver -. Access to informations enables students to conduct their own researches and discovery learning. Indeed, now students can have a choice on what they want to learn, how the intend their learning to take place and how much informations they want to generate.

The wide and broad access to the outside world provide students the communication medium where interactions and collaborations among students from around the world can take place. Students can share informations and learnings with each other. Discussions and debates could took place online where students would be able to allow themselves to be exposed to different perspectives of different views of the people around the world. Malaysian students would no longer be oxtracised by the world community, as we are no longer constricted to the limited traditional perspective.

The available technology also enables students to accomplish a more difficult and complex tasks. For example, students can represent their learning in high-quality colourful graphs and able to examine and understand the deeper levels of the graphs. In Science for example, students can learn about the human body thoroughly inside and out. Experiments can be done online without the unnecessary lack of tools to hinder learning to take place.

In term of motivation, students' willingness to participate in learning has greatly improved compared to us previously. The enjoyment of learning using technology motivate students to learn and take useful advantage of it. Students would be more aware of the relationship of their learning with the real world, creating a sense of need to gain knowledge in order to survive.