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distinction between knowledge and information becomes difficult to maintain (Usher and Edwards, 1998). ‘Legitimate’ or ‘worthwhile’ knowledge becomes that information used in the self-directing and self-monitored practices of cyberspace’s virtual communities.
In summary, information technology in particular cyberspace, has opened up the field of education and has provided a foundation for a new paradigm that treats both learners and teachers as active participants in the process of education. The new paradigm can be understood through the emergence of virtual learning environments where focus is moved away from the teacher as the central authority responsible for validating gained knowledge. There is a need to investigate thoroughly how this pedagogic shift helps to enhance education received by learners.
Therefore, the next consideration will be on the paradigm shift in pedagogy from face-to-face to interactive learning.
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“If you were to be in any school in five years time you should find children learning about and being prepared to live, in a society in which devices and systems based on microelectronics and associated technologies were commonplace and pervasive, and where these technologies may have altered and be altering the relationships between people, and between individuals and their work”.
This change is a direct consequence of education led by the ICTs. There is nothing new about teaching with technology but what is new is the end of a long age of relatively stable
technological relations (O’Donnell, 1995). O'Donnell contends that our institutions have long emphasized the autonomy, the authority, and the self-reliance of the teacher in the classroom but we now live in an age when the isolation of the classroom is breaking up and disappearing. This is the end of an era which has been dominated by print and the dawn of the new one dominated by ICTs. Chou et al. (1993) discusses these two paradigms, (i) traditional (modern) school and (ii) the virtual (post-modern) school.
3.2.1 The Traditional (Modern) School
The traditional school is based on the traditional theory of teaching and learning. According to Luckett (1995) the traditional model or paradigm has been variously described as ‘curriculum as prescription’ (Goodson, 1994), didactic model (Rowland, 1993), instructional model (Jenkins and Walker, 1994), or as ‘curriculum as product’ (Grundy, 1987). Chou et al. (1993) argued that classroom education is structured to allow a single teacher the ability to manage a group of students where each lesson occupies a specific amount of time and allows subjects to be divided into units and study is therefore, a sequence of units; progress through stuffy units is regulated and takes no cognisance of learner needs; and learning is structured around the authority of the textbook and excludes the life experiences of students.
McClintock (1996) asserts:
“Traditionally, the school and the classroom have been places where teachers and students are isolated from the general culture and where information and ideas have been relatively scarce – the textbook is a meagre selection of what a field of knowledge comprises, a skilled teacher is a bundle of ignorance relative to the sum of learning, and a school library a sparse collection at best”.
Although the newly introduced C2005 in South Africa is trying to move away from the instructivist practices of the past, the traditional paradigm has been the dominant teaching and learning paradigm in South Africa for centuries and moving away from it is not easy,
particularly for teachers who are so used to such practices.
33 3.2.2. The Virtual (Post-Modern) School
The introduction of virtual learning spaces in the virtual or post-modern school brought changes in the teaching profession (Chou et al., 1993). Differences in access between traditional and virtual learning are highlighted in this manner, “In our extended present, the educational problem changes profoundly, shifting from stratagems for disbursing scarce knowledge to finding ways to enable people to use unlimited access to the resources of our cultures”
(McClintock, 1996). The emphasis on student inquiry introduces elements of unpredictability and disturbs any possibility of the routine in the educational discourse. Responding constantly to questions emerging from students' experience, teachers will re-assume the Socratic mantle and reverse the progressive de-skilling the profession has undergone since the Industrial Revolution (Chou et al., 1993). Chou and colleagues table the following characteristics of the virtual learning school: Learning, supported with ICT, can take place independent of time and space; learners are able to gauge their own progress through the learning tasks and can undertake their own investigations; learning design follows a non-linear model; and learning includes the exploration of information other than just a textbook:
“New media alter the ways of knowing and the opportunities for participating in the creation of knowledge. Multimedia, and its extension in virtual reality, is not merely a glitzy vehicle for edutainment hype. It is an epistemologically interesting development in our culture. … Multimedia make it increasingly evident that the work of thinking can take many forms – verbal, visual, auditory, kinetic, and blends of all and each” (McClintock, 1996)
It appears that these two paradigms (Modern versus Post-Modern result from two dissimilar historical eras influenced by the different technologies and learning theories. While the South African government has embraced a post-modern paradigm through the introduction of OBE, little attention has been made on the use of technology to support both teachers and learners cognitive development.
It is not easy, however, to define post-modernity theory as it means different things to different people. Post-modernism could be traced back to the Renaissance period but became more concrete during the European Enlightenment era of the 19th and early 20th centuries (Klages, 2003). Post-modernism is more of a critic to the notion of modernity which supports “objective knowledge, or the possibility of objective knowledge, by its assumption that such knowledge refers directly to an objective reality which would appear in the same way to any observer”
(Lemke, 1994). In contrasting the two concepts, Lemeke asserts that post-modernism denies the presence of ‘objective knowledge’ as it recognises that knowledge is made through language and other cultural resources of a particular culture, which might be different from culture to
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culture and even within groups. Therefore, post-modernity is a theory that espouses multi- pronged approach to learning and acknowledges that there are no absolute truths and or objectives because different cultures can see, and make sense of the world different ways.
It is acknowledged that the information and communication revolution influences concepts such as post-modernity where ‘isolate individual worldviews’ are now more easily discussed in open and dynamic environment. The question for educationists is how to use the power of ICTs to support multiple worldviews and non-linear learning models. The next section explores the use of virtual learning spaces and educational games.