Department of Curriculum Studies

Faculty of Education
University of Pretoria
2007
BEd (Hons) CIE

CIT 720 Computers as Cognitive Tools

Text: Jonassen, D.H. 2006. Modeling with Technology. New Jersey:

Pearson Education Inc.

Reading Test 1

Name Mabuse Phaladi Student No. 26509360

Read the Preface to your prescribed book with a view to answering the
following questions; skip a line after each question.
1. What fallacy was propagated by traditional education technologists?

They assumed that if you design, construct and embed effective lessons in
television or computers and show them to students, students will learn the
intended lesson.

2. The author says that technologies are lousy teachers. What does he
say should educators consider?

Educators must analyse how technology can teach better and how students
must think to learn most meaningfully.

3. When does meaningful learning occur according to the author?

Mention 4 components of meaningful learning.

From the early age. Four components: meaningful purpose, conceptual

engagement, conceptual development and methods and strategies that
support three components.
4. What constitutes the most meaningful task or purpose to propagate
meaningful learning according to Jonassen?

Problem solving.
5. Explain the term conceptual engagement in your own words.

When students intend to learn a concept in order to accomplish a task, they

think about components of the task and how they are linked.
6. In you own words, explain conceptual development that is also
known as conceptual change.

It is the path of learning from the first stage that build the personal theories
through experience and reflection in reorganizing the conceptual complexity
as they learn.
7. According to Jonassen methods and strategies are required to
support meaningful learning. In his opinion one of the most powerful
strategies to achieve this goal is for the learner to construct a model
of what he is learning. List 6 attributes of model building.

• Describe how the model helped me build richer models of conceptual

change process.
• Explains model building and its rationale.
• Describes methods for assessing modelling that students build.
• Students use Mindtools to model domain knowledge.
• Use of systems that organize the knowledge.
• Use of Mindtools to build models of problems they are solving.

Reading Test 2

Read pp. 3-8 in your prescribed book with a view to answering the following
1. Define conceptual change.

Increased emphasis on constructivism to focus the attention in making sense

of conceptions of meaningful learning.
2. Mention four variables that influence the amount and kinds of
conceptual change in a learner.

• Builds simplified and intuitive personal theories to explain the external

worlds in which they live.
• Interact with new information to be comprehensible, coherent and
plausible according to existing conceptual models.
• Learners change their understanding of the concepts they use and
encompass them.
• Revision of conceptual framework is necessary.
3. Jonassen uses technologies to construct models that show learners’
internal conceptual models. Complete the following quotation from p4:
“As learners build and alter their models, they are … .”

“As learners build and alter their models, they are constructing knowledge by
changing their conceptions of what they are learning.”
4. Jonassen proposes that learners construct models of subject content
by using technology-based modelling tools. This facilitates the process
of conceptual change in learners and provides evidence of their
learning and conceptual change. Explain the following in your own
words: “A dynamic and reciprocal process occurs between internal
conceptual models and the external models that learners construct.”
[p5].

The level of change in terms of new knowledge that the learners gained
through the conceptual change entails that learners are able to apply the
gained knowledge, when facing the outside world with the dynamic skills
gained through construction of conceptual model.