Perceptions

One of Romano’s perceptions was that the final out-come of the teaching-learning process relies heavily on how teachers handle the vast amount of information generated with the digital age. He included a profound statement “Thompson said that the successful teacher primarily manages information, not students” (p. 52). This may be true at the collegiate level but any education lower than that seems to make demands on teachers to spend more time managing students to be successful in their classrooms.

Romano (2003) stated that the master instructors in the Information Age will be those individuals who can sort through all the vast amounts of data provided by the Worldwide Web and pick out only the information that will enhance the students learning experience. This is something I am trying to improve myself by taking this class so that I can develop more effective learning communities. The words “replicas” and “referents” helped me to better understand how the quality of the experience you are trying replicate to learners is derived from the disparity between the referent and the replica. This disparity determines the fidelity of information you are trying to bring into the learners environment.

Another one of Romano’s perceptions identified the fundamental level of all learning being done through the senses which consist of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling. In past teaching experiences, I have tried to bring in each on of the senses during the learning process. It is very difficult to always use all of the senses all the time but over the course of the whole semester different ones can be used to help students’ process information.

I think the perception presented by Romano that overwhelmed my cognitive ability to comprehend was “Human progress from the Stone Age to the Information Age resulted primarily from amplifying individuals’ capacity to function, first by empowering them with crude implements, then tools, then machines, and now technology. He later inferred that the amplifier brought about by the computer and its being able to link across the world with distribution technologies is “too awesome to contemplate” (p. 47). This would bring about a million-fold multiplication of a million-fold amplifier which is more than I can comprehend. I know that the technological knowledge we have now grow exponentially every so many years and we have not even come close to what the future could hold in technology which will effect the teacher.

Romano (2003) stated “A verbal description alone of anything that can be seen must be considered a compromise; a compromise made every day in classrooms in an age when technology makes it unnecessary” (p. 56). This is why I try to use all the visual aids I can when I teach face-to-face. I put pictures of neurotransmitters and etc. on my website and pull them up and project them on the screen in the front of the class. In addition, I use movies to show an accurate portrayal of a particular disorder we are talking about.

Creating this type of learning experience encroaches on Romano’s perception that there is enough scientific evidence “That learning is heightened when teachers create visually rich experiences, thus engaging the learner’s entire brain―rather than only half. This evidence has encouraged me to include even more visual aids and continue to use WebCT to enrich the learners experience so that both sides of their brains will be used during the learning process.

Romano, M. T. (2003). Empowering Teachers with Technology. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.