German psychologist Wolfgang Kohler's study of apes on the island of Tenerife, which is documented in The Mentality of Apes(1925) presents the "dissenting opinion to the associative view of memory. (Furthermore), instead of allowing that the mind learned simple connections between ideas or associations between stimuli and responses, Kohler argued that his apes learned relations among stimuli and could modify their behaviour by perceiving stimuli in new ways." (Driscoll, Marcy P., Psychology of Learning for Instruction. Pearson Education Inc., 2004) In other words, the supporter of the Gestalt Theory believed that knowledge does not just come from experience, it also involves the knower actively imposing organization on sensory data (Driscoll).
The typical experiment conducted by Kohler involved him placing food just out of reach of apes in a cage. The apes would then try a number of solutions to obtain the bananas (usually sticks-tools- were what helped the apes). Kohler referred to this as insight, as the apes did not always behave in a regular, continuous fashion.
The modern learner also has this insight. Instead of using sticks to obtain bananas, though, they use computers to acquire knowledge. Furthermore, they will use these same tools to share their knowledge and understanding of concepts with their teacher, peers, and anyone else that is interested. These skills come naturally to young students, as this is what they have grown up with. That being said, there seems to be a naturally progression as to what the learner knows in, let's say grade 5, to what she knows in grade 8. It is the role of the teacher to determine what skills the grade 5 students have, and then work from there.
An effective way to gauge students' grasp of technology is a simple survey, which could be created on Surveymonkey or some other online server. Furthermore, a rubric of what students should know by grade x should be given to teachers so that certain skills are taught by a certain grade (with some variation based on the knowledge of the teacher). Once basic skills are taught, students will use their insight to solve future problems, and act accordingly.
Coming up next...Stepping Stones
