Active Learning Overview
Active or Generative Learning is an approach to learner-centered education that utilizes instructional techniques that involve students in reading, writing, discussing, reflecting and producing in order to help them learn. Active learning with technology can be described as students actively engaged in using technology as a tool rather than passively receiving information from the technology.
The theory of active learning goes back to Dewey’s idea (1938) of learning by doing.
Even when, to both teachers and students, lecturing appears to be working, (students intently listening, nodding heads, taking notes), what’s going on in the minds of students probably looks a lot like distraction, lack of interest, and only a vague recollection of what was said. Even though it can appear that lecture-based, PowerPoint-driven learning is effective, it rarely is, and is almost never as effective a use of time as the learning-by-doing approach that could be done in its stead.
– Roger Shank http://www.socraticarts.com/schank/newsletters/news08.htm