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Motivational pedagogical

potential of Information

and Communication

Technologies in basic

secondary education: An

alternative to strengthen

attention-concentration in

post-pandemic times.

Potencial pedagógico motivacional de

las Tecnologías de Información y

Comunicación en la educación básica

secundaria: Alternativa para

fortalecer la atención – concentración

en tiempos de postpandemia

Luis Gabriel Cabarcas

Margarita Perez Campanelli

Abstract

This article presents the results of a study entitled Strengthening

attention-concentration in high school students through the use of

ICT. Its purpose is to show the pedagogical-motivational potential

of these tools linked to attention-concentration, based on an action-

research experience where attention-concentration problems were

diagnosed, which were intervened through the application of three

* Master's Degree, Corporación Universitaria

Iberoamericana, Docente,luiscabarcasg@hotmail.com,

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8953-3959

* Master's Degree, Universitaria Iberoamericana,

Psychologist, margaritaperez@hotmail.com

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5577-6688

Article

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(3) workshops to an intentional sample of ten (10) students

belonging to the IED Mayor de Barranquilla and the Caribbean,

Colombia. The results revealed that, once the interests of the group

were aligned with the pedagogical purposes of technological

mediation, the students improved their attention - concentration;

they were able to be enthusiastic, participate in a disciplined manner;

produce and socialize content on websites and social networks with

reflective messages alluding to the importance of ICT as a tool

favorable to the consolidation of this skill. It is concluded that ICTs

are an effective tool to consolidate attention-concentration as a

determining skill in student academic performance.

Keywords: social isolation; education, COVID-19; pandemic,

post-pandemic, ICT.

Resumen

En el presente artículo se dan a conocer los resultados de un estudio

intitulado Fortalecimiento de la Atención–concentración en

estudiantes de secundaria mediante el uso de las (TIC). Tiene como

propósito dar a conocer el potencial pedagógico – motivacional de

estas herramientas vinculado a la atención – concentración, a partir

de una experiencia de investigación – acción donde se

diagnosticaron problemas de atención concentración, los cuales

fueron intervenidos mediante la aplicación de tres (3) talleres a una

muestra intencional de diez (10) estudiantes pertenecientes a la

institución IED Mayor de Barranquilla y el Caribe, Colombia. Los

resultados develaron que, una vez alineados los intereses del grupo

con los fines pedagógicos de la mediación tecnológica, las

estudiantes mejoraron su atención - concentración; fueron capaces

de entusiasmarse, participar de manera disciplinada; producir y

socializar contenidos en sitios web y redes sociales con mensajes

reflexivos alusivos a la importancia de las TIC como herramienta

favorable a la consolidación de esta habilidad. Se concluye que las

TIC son una herramienta efectiva para consolidar la atención –

concentración como habilidad determinante en rendimiento

académico estudiantil.

Palabras clave: Aislamiento social; educación, COVID-19;

pandemia, postpandemia, TIC.

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Introduction

The pandemic of 2020, caused by the COVID-19 virus, caused a

great impact worldwide, generating chaos and uncertainty in all

sectors of society. The education sector was no exception; isolation

and virtuality have marked a milestone in the history of education,

changing the ways of relating and even of seeing life. The academic

effects of COVID 19 altered the dynamics of education worldwide.

In the Colombian context, the then President of the Republic, Iván

Duque Márquez, issued decree number 847 of 2020, which modifies

Decree 749 of May 28, 2020, to give instructions under the sanitary

emergency. The pronouncement of other ministries was not long in

coming. The Colombian Ministry of Health decrees social isolation.

Decisions are made to defend educational programs, plans and

projects; the Departmental Health Secretaries, together with the

Ministry of National Education, with Circular No. 00021 of March

26, 2020, ordered that the social interaction of students be only

through virtual media. Colombian children and young people, who

were studying face-to-face, had to adapt to distance education

(Ministry of National Education-MEN, S.F, 2017).

Virtual learning environments are used to guarantee the right to

education for children, young people and adults. Every home

becomes a classroom. The new virtues of virtual education allow

students to access their classes and academic commitments online.

The teacher-student relationship, in terms of dialogues and

transmission of experience and learning were conditioned by

virtuality, to a computer or a smart phone.

However, despite the efforts made by educational and health

authorities to create political conditions to face the emergency,

Colombian educational institutions (public and private) are not

prepared. Schools lack technological tools to guarantee virtual or

distance education that meets quality standards.

The alteration of conventional school discipline, characterized by

attendance, rigid schedules, traditional classes, memorization and

reproduction of content, was not long in coming. On the other hand,

the leisure and unmediated use of ICTs experienced during the two

years of the pandemic, awakens new interests, styles and ways of

learning in students, making their motives revolve around the

possibilities that these tools provide for communication; access to all

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kinds of information through texts, images, videos, games, social

networks, among others.

In this scenario, scientists and pedagogues recognize ICT as a

valuable resource to improve educational quality due to its

pedagogical-motivational potential. New educational challenges

arise; and with them the demand to reconfigure education to adapt to

the post pandemic period considering new ways of generating

knowledge through mediation, a rethinking of traditional teaching

strategies, the use and pedagogical benefit of Information and

Communication Technologies (ICT) and the development of

information processing skills.

However, some teachers are resistant to developing mediation

processes adapted to the new educational reality, which means that

in the mediation processes developed by these actors, the needs,

characteristics and new interests of the students are not considered

when planning and developing their classes. The resistance to

change of some mediators makes students show little interest in the

classes; the lack of attention and concentration in the teaching and

learning processes is evident. In addition to the above, there are

psychological pathologies developed by some students due to lack

of guidance on the correct use of ICTs, including technodependence

and pornodependence.

This affected the development of basic learning skills such as

reading comprehension and meaningful learning, resulting in low

academic performance, school dropout and failure to comply with

educational quality standards.

In view of this scenario, the authors conducted a study to intervene

in the reality described above, entitled Strengthening Attention-

Concentration in high school students through the use of ICTs, with

the following objectives:

Once the action research has been developed, the following question

arises: what is the motivational pedagogical potential of Information

Communication Technologies (ICT) linked to attention-

concentration? This article answers this question by making known

the pedagogical-motivational potential of these tools linked to

attention-concentration, based on the results of the aforementioned

action-research experience.

Constructivism represents a current of pedagogical thought that

conceives learning as a process of intersubjective construction

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resulting from the interpretation and reinterpretation of the human

mind. Thus, the objects, laws and phenomena observed in reality are

not independent of the observers. The constructivist philosophy

establishes that reality is constructed by means of representations of

internal experience, therefore, it does not admit the existence of

objective knowledge (González, 1995).

It should be noted that constructivism has epistemological,

psychological and pedagogical sources. Among its epistemological

sources, radical constructivism (Maturana, Von Foester,

Watzlawick) and critical constructivism (Popper, Bachelard, Kuhn

and Lorenz) stand out. Its psychological sources refer to Ausubel's

cognitive assimilation, information processing psychology

(Rumelhart and Norman's visions); Piaget's genetic psychology and

Vygotsky's cultural psychology.

The benefits that this current of thought has brought to the scientific

community in the educational field refer to the promotion of a

democratic culture where students and teachers have the possibility

of interacting and contributing to the construction of knowledge.

Now, in the context of a globalized society governed by Information

and Communication Technologies (ICT), constructivist thinking

makes sense in the articulation with contemporary knowledge about

the interests of children, young people and adults; and its

pedagogical, psychological and sociocultural dimensions (González,

1995).

It should be noted that ICTs represent the set of "resources, tools,

equipment, computer programs, applications, networks and media

that allow the compilation, processing, storage and transmission of

information through voice, data, text, video and images"

(Tecnólogy, 2022). These tools facilitate the materialization of

constructivist thinking by offering the possibility of interacting,

processing, storing, retrieving and sharing information without time

and space limitations. This is due to the benefits they offer in terms

of the technological advances brought about by information

technology, telecommunications and audiovisual technologies (Yuni

and Urbano, 2005).

Indeed, according to UNESCO (2022, p. 1) ICTs can facilitate "...

universal access to education, reduce learning gaps, support teacher

development, improve the quality and relevance of learning,

strengthen inclusion and improve educational management and

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administration". Undoubtedly, ICTs favor the application of

constructivist principles that make possible the management of

knowledge from a democratic perspective.

Connectivism represents a learning theory with a systemic approach

that explains educational processes in the digital era (Siemens,

2004). It emerges in the global context with new educational

scenarios where technology in education plays a fundamental role.

Indeed, according to Fenwick, quoted by Gutiérrez (2012), the

phenomenon of globalization, in addition to transforming the way of

doing business, the nature of services and the meaning of time at

work, has impacted learning processes.

Its creator, George Siemens, argues that the classical learning

theories (behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism) have

limitations to respond to the educational demand of the digital era,

since they were proposed in a period where technology had not

impacted learning by influencing the acceleration of knowledge.

Thus, for the aforementioned author, the act of learning is not an

isolated experience, but an action where knowledge nodes are

combined and connected; where effective decisions are made based

on the analysis of different and contradictory opinions derived from

a wide range of points of view. Connectivism proposes the

following principles,

- Learning and knowledge are found in the diversity of opinions.

- Learning is conceived as a process of specialized connection of

nodes or sources of information.

- Learning can reside in non-human artifacts.

- The ability to know more is more important than what is known

at a given moment.

- Facilitating continuous learning requires nurturing and

maintaining connections.

- The ability to identify connections between areas, ideas and

concepts is essential.

- Decision-making is a learning process in itself.

- -Selecting what to learn and the meaning of incoming

information is viewed through the lens of a changing reality.

These principles underpin the application of ICTs in educational

contexts and show that they are fundamental tools for learning and

mediating learning in the digital era. Indeed, for Giesbercht (2007)

Connectivism is based on the establishment of connections where

students extend their learning practices beyond the classroom to

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open up to real life experiences. This makes education a holistic and

integral process that demands a balance between the needs of

learners and institutional needs.

Meaningful learning is one of the theories linked to the constructivist

current of thought. It was created by David P. Ausubel in 1963 as a

reaction to the prevailing behaviorism. For Ausubel, learning is a

process by which new information is related to the cognitive

structure of the learner in a non-arbitrary and substantive (non-

linear) way (Rodríguez, 2011).

This theory proposes a teaching-learning model based on discovery

that privileges activism (Ausubel, 1979, 2022). In this theory,

learning is determined by the student's previous cognitive structure

and his or her capacity to associate it with new information. It should

be noted that a cognitive structure is conceived as the set of concepts

and ideas that a person possesses in a given field of knowledge.

(Ausubel, 1979, 2022).

In fact, motivation is essential to generate an adequate classroom

climate and to interest students in their work; the medium as a

resource; creativity, which enhances imagination and intelligence;

the concept map, a tool that relates concepts and curricular

adaptation (Ballester 2002, 2008).

ICTs have the potential to attract students' attention, generating a

climate of cooperation, collaboration and group interaction, all of

which are favorable to the development of meaningful learning,

since they help students to relate new information to their cognitive

structure or previous knowledge.

Materials and methods

The article reports results derived from an action-research

experience framed in the sociocritical paradigm, qualitative

approach, where concentration attention problems were diagnosed,

which were intervened through the application of three (3)

workshops to an intentional sample of ten (10) ninth grade students

belonging to the IED Mayor de Barranquilla y el Caribe institution,

Colombia. Documentary analysis was used as a technique for data

collection with the support of a documentary analysis matrix. After

analyzing the results from a critical perspective, these are made

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known to the scientific community through the publication of this

article.

Results

Once the interests of the group were aligned with the pedagogical

purposes of technological mediation, the students selected as an

intentional sample in this study were able to become enthusiastic,

participate in a disciplined manner, produce and socialize content on

websites and social networks with reflective messages about the

importance of ICT as a tool to consolidate attention and

concentration.

These achievements validate the postulates of social constructivism

and meaningful learning of Vigotsky and Ausubel, who emphasize

that learning is the product of an inter-subjective construction.

Likewise, they also emphasize the importance of motivation to

generate an adequate classroom climate and to interest students in

their work (Ballester 2002, 2008). Indeed, the group studied was

motivated due to the potentially significant material offered by the

technologies, allowing them to anchor their previous knowledge to

the new information incorporated into their cognitive structure.

In the words of Lev Vygotsky (Historical - cultural theory of

psychology; philo - ontogenetic evolution) what happened is

evidence of an internalization of culture, where technological

mediation played a fundamental role, relating the zone of current

development with the zone of proximal development (Falieres and

Antolín, 2007).

In the light of Ausubel's theoretical postulates (meaningful learning),

what happened represents the consequence of the motivational effect

caused by the use of ICT (highly significant material) that facilitated

the anchoring of new information incorporated into the cognitive

structure for the generation of new knowledge.

Furthermore, in communion with the above, the motivational effect

observed can be explained from neuroeducation and the autonomous

learning approach, associated with metacognition as the ability to

reflect on one's own knowledge processes and products, under a

mediation that manages to develop in them the interest in learning;

this was evident in the reflections published by the students

regarding their knowledge processes and products.

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With regard to neuroeducation, this new science explains that

educational processes are intimately associated with emotions, since

no one learns what he dislikes or does not want to learn, some

summarize the above by stating that education is emotion. In fact,

the group studied initially showed resistance to the proposed

activities, then, upon discovering that they were aligned with their

interests, they showed enthusiasm and commitment, attending and

concentrating on the proposed pedagogical actions (Falieres and

Antolín, 2007).

On the other hand, the achievements reached in these workshops

confirm the postulates of Cabero (2004); Abogadro, Quiroga and

Ricardo, (2015), who agree in pointing out that ICT are

technological tools on which students show great interest due to the

variety of options and functions they offer in order to communication

and social interaction, therefore, their potential represents an

attraction to achieve optimal student performance.

The aforementioned authors also agree in differentiating between the

use of ICTs and learning with ICTs, as expressed by Connectivism

(Siemens, 2004). This differentiation was noticed by the group of

students attended. This is demonstrated by the reflections expressed

in the workshops conducted, where they were able to publish on

social networks and websites information related to the topic and

their learning experience. Indeed, during the pandemic period, even

when they received orientation guides, they did not have the

necessary guidance to take pedagogical advantage of these

resources.

Discussion

ICTs have a great pedagogical potential to consolidate the cognitive

and social skills demanded by the digital society and teachers are

aware of this. Attention - concentration affects the development of

memory and comprehension; fundamental cognitive skills for the

production - socialization of digital content. The positive results of

this study demonstrate the pedagogical potential of ICT for the

consolidation of one of the fundamental cognitive skills such as

attention - concentration. The benefit of the benefits of these

technologies is linked to variables such as teachers' abilities to

exercise technological mediation; their commitment to education

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and the clarity they have about the pedagogical potential of these

technologies for the development of cognitive and social skills

demanded by the digital society.

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