Lesson 5

The Cone of Experience

-       The Cone of Experience or Edgar Dale’s Cone of Experience is a visual model, a pictorial device that presents bands of experience arranged according to degree of abstraction and nit to degree of difficulty. The farther you go from the bottom of the cone, the more abstract the experience becomes.

Who is Edgar Dale?

 - He was born: April 27, 1900, Benson, Minnesota, United States

 -He served on the Ohio State University faculty from 1929 until 1970. He was an internationally renowned pioneer in the utilization of audio-visual materials in instruction. He is a professor and his most famous concept was called “Cone of Experience”, a graphic depiction of the relationship between how information is presented in instruction and the outcomes for learners.

- He died: March 8, 1985, Columbus, Ohio, United States

A.   Direct Purposeful Experiences- These are the first hand experiences which serve as the foundation of our learning. We build up our reservoir of meaningful information and ideas through seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. In the context of the teaching-learning process, it is learning by doing.

B.   Contrived Experiences- In here, we make use of a representative models or mock-ups of reality for practical reason and so that we can make the real life accessible to the student’s perceptions and understanding.

C.   Dramatized Experiences- By dramatization, we can participate in a reconstructed experience, even though the original event is far removed from us in time. We relive the outbreak of the Philippine revolution by acting out the role of characters in a drama.

D.   Demonstrations- It is a visualized explanation of an important fact, idea or process by the use of photographs, drawings, films, displays or guided motions. It is showing how things are done.

E.   Study Trips- These are excursions, educational trips and visits conducted to observe an event that is unavailable within the classroom.

F.    Exhibits- These are display to be seen by spectators. They may consist of working models arranged meaningfully or photographs with models, charts and posters. Sometimes exhibits are “for your eyes only”. There are some exhibits, however, that include sensory experiences where spectators are allowed to touch or manipulate models displayed.

G.   Television and Motion Pictures- Television and motion pictures can reconstruct the reality of the past so effectively that we are made to feel we are there. The unique value of the messages communicated by film and television lies in their feeling or realism, their emphasis on persons and personality, their organized presentation and their ability to select, dramatized, highlight and clarify.

H.   Still Pictures, Recordings and Radio- These are visual and auditory devices which may be used an individual or a group. Still pictures lack the sound and motion of a sound film. The radio broadcast of an actual event may often be likened to a televised broadcast minus its visual dimension.

I.      Visual Symbols- These are no longer realistic reproduction of physical things for these are highly abstract representations. Examples are charts, graphs, maps and diagrams.

J.    Verbal Symbols- They are not like the objects or ideas for which they stand. They usually do not contain visual clues to their meaning. Written words fall under this category. It may be a word for concrete object(book), an idea (freedom of speech), a scientific principle( the principle of balance, a formula,(e=mc²).

Bruner’s Three-Tiered Model of Learning

Who is Jerome S. Bruner?

-  -Full name is Jerome Seymour Bruner and born on October 1, 1915, New York, New York, U.S.—died June 5, 2016, New York, New York) educator whose work on perception, learning and memory

   - A Harvard psychologist, presents a three-tiered model of learning where he points out that every area of knowledge can be represented and learned in three distinct steps.

 Enactive- learn through movement or action.

 Iconic- learn through images or icons.

 Symbolic- learn through abstract symbols.

-      It is highly recommended that a learner proceeds from the ENACTIVE to the ICONIC and only after to the SYMBOLIC. The mind is often shocked into immediate abstraction at the highest level without the benefit of a gradual unfolding.