Thursday, January 24, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Module 2 Reflection
The assignment for this week was a wiki embedded Venn-diagram comparing the different models of teaching in regards to using technology: Face to Face, Blended, and Online. Just in case, I've embedded the diagram again here, because my computer kept freezing and I like to make sure (paranoia is never good, but my compulsive tendencies to make doubly sure of some techy things will, I hope, be helpful as an online teacher).
Module 2 Reflection:
1. Reflecting on the information covered in this module so far, how might your instructional methodologies need to change in an online or blended learning environment?
2. What skills and strategies might you improve or expand upon in order to best support student learning in a blended or online environment?
The availability of online content means that I will have to spend less of my time reviewing, practicing, coming up with practice exercises or running copies; instead, I will have to focus on gathering and organizing that content and having students prove their knowledge. Vocab quizzes seem obsolete; but blogging about a themed set of words and sharing the posts/stories is a more entertaining alternative to using each word in a sentence (actually, I already have that as an option, but some students don’t want to appear ‘nerdy’). So one of the areas I need to expand upon is my own knowledge of web 2.0 possibilities, and building up a repertoire of activities that lend themselves more to online productivity. I think that’s the only uncomfortable part of all this – I’m good in the classroom, I’m good at enticing kids to pay attention to me (at least until the next text) and catching them when their attention strays; I’m good at adapting instantly when I need to because I have so many methodologies, strategies, alternate assignments, etc. in my mind and at my fingertips. Finally, I will have to develop my web-presence. I’m fun in the classroom, but online? I am such a noob.
Page 5 of our module 2 “classroom” mentioned, “At a simple level, consider the difference between knowing how to post messages on a discussion board versus understanding how to use a discussion board to create a lively educational class debate.” This is like a round-table or fishbowl discussion. It will take some experimenting for the online version of appropriate interaction, but I’m already really good at setting up discussion questions – in fact I did it in college once or twice when a professor didn’t have the question up. The weird thing is, these kinds of questions are usually more towards the end of the lesson when I’ve already asked most of the comprehension questions. I guess these will have to be asked at the beginning, and the content comprehension questions will have to be handled by the content providers? Still, when I think about lessons, I think about the long-term end goal, and then think about "what will students need to understand and do today" so that I can check understanding, give feedback, etc. I can't imagine having students turn in essays paragraph by paragraph online. And since the spell check and grammar check are already here, maybe I won't have to focus on those as much? Maybe the time I would normally spend on that instruction will change to discussions and monitoring those discussions. How I think about how instructional time is spent (and even thinking that instructional time is limited to less than an hour at a sitting) is going to have to change!
Other skills included communication skills, tech savvy, time management, and relating to students. I'll start with the last, first: So much of my ability to relate to students and make content relevant depends on non-education moments, like noticing a kid is tired, or discussing some new video briefly between classes. Online learning seems to promise to cut down time spent on disruptive classroom behavior (yay!) but what about all those little things that make people relate to people? Still, I already specialize in learning things about students through writing, so I think that, with practice, I'll be okay. Michelle R Davis, in “E-Learning Seeks a Custom Fit,” says, “Within each of those [online] courses are multiple ways to access the content, Vedoe says. Some students may click on audio and visual material provided with the text, but since doing so isn’t required, others may bypass those features. Students may feel more comfortable communicating with their teacher through a wiki, through e-mail, by instant messaging, or by telephone. All those means of getting in touch are options…” ( Technology Counts, Education Week, February 3, 2010). So again, it's a matter of learning to use what's available (and learning it well enough to teach some students and keep up with the others!) Luckily, I am pretty good at writing; but I don’t think that’s good enough since I have had many students tell me that they really don’t understand some things until it is read aloud to them. So I will have to learn more about skype and including podcasts or similar in content. It makes me a little nervous to think that the majority of content might be controlled by some vendor. Based on what I’ve experienced in several textbook adoptions, vendors are really good at selling and usually not as good at teaching. That said, even if we have awesome content, fantastic tech training, etc., there are still those students who don’t “get it” without someone walking them through it. I’ll need to expand my knowledge of tools to help those kids. The advantage is that, in online learning, I can work with one child at a time without worrying about one of my taggers adding his or her artwork to the inside cover of a text book the moment I'm otherwise occupied.
I have pretty good time management skills, communication skills, and my current position requires constant checking-in and monitoring not only students assignments, understanding, and grades, but their exact hours of attendance and equivalent work hours in their course(s). I'm not worried about the intensity of the job at this point because I'm used to "intense."
Organizing content is something that I work on a lot in the classroom. The challenge here seems to be front-loaded in terms of time and is required upfront in the course. As I said in the first reflection, I know that the organization of online content and pacing are the things that I need help with and was the impetus in taking this course. So I'm lookin' forward to Module 3.
Module 2 Reflection:
1. Reflecting on the information covered in this module so far, how might your instructional methodologies need to change in an online or blended learning environment?
2. What skills and strategies might you improve or expand upon in order to best support student learning in a blended or online environment?
The availability of online content means that I will have to spend less of my time reviewing, practicing, coming up with practice exercises or running copies; instead, I will have to focus on gathering and organizing that content and having students prove their knowledge. Vocab quizzes seem obsolete; but blogging about a themed set of words and sharing the posts/stories is a more entertaining alternative to using each word in a sentence (actually, I already have that as an option, but some students don’t want to appear ‘nerdy’). So one of the areas I need to expand upon is my own knowledge of web 2.0 possibilities, and building up a repertoire of activities that lend themselves more to online productivity. I think that’s the only uncomfortable part of all this – I’m good in the classroom, I’m good at enticing kids to pay attention to me (at least until the next text) and catching them when their attention strays; I’m good at adapting instantly when I need to because I have so many methodologies, strategies, alternate assignments, etc. in my mind and at my fingertips. Finally, I will have to develop my web-presence. I’m fun in the classroom, but online? I am such a noob.
Page 5 of our module 2 “classroom” mentioned, “At a simple level, consider the difference between knowing how to post messages on a discussion board versus understanding how to use a discussion board to create a lively educational class debate.” This is like a round-table or fishbowl discussion. It will take some experimenting for the online version of appropriate interaction, but I’m already really good at setting up discussion questions – in fact I did it in college once or twice when a professor didn’t have the question up. The weird thing is, these kinds of questions are usually more towards the end of the lesson when I’ve already asked most of the comprehension questions. I guess these will have to be asked at the beginning, and the content comprehension questions will have to be handled by the content providers? Still, when I think about lessons, I think about the long-term end goal, and then think about "what will students need to understand and do today" so that I can check understanding, give feedback, etc. I can't imagine having students turn in essays paragraph by paragraph online. And since the spell check and grammar check are already here, maybe I won't have to focus on those as much? Maybe the time I would normally spend on that instruction will change to discussions and monitoring those discussions. How I think about how instructional time is spent (and even thinking that instructional time is limited to less than an hour at a sitting) is going to have to change!
Other skills included communication skills, tech savvy, time management, and relating to students. I'll start with the last, first: So much of my ability to relate to students and make content relevant depends on non-education moments, like noticing a kid is tired, or discussing some new video briefly between classes. Online learning seems to promise to cut down time spent on disruptive classroom behavior (yay!) but what about all those little things that make people relate to people? Still, I already specialize in learning things about students through writing, so I think that, with practice, I'll be okay. Michelle R Davis, in “E-Learning Seeks a Custom Fit,” says, “Within each of those [online] courses are multiple ways to access the content, Vedoe says. Some students may click on audio and visual material provided with the text, but since doing so isn’t required, others may bypass those features. Students may feel more comfortable communicating with their teacher through a wiki, through e-mail, by instant messaging, or by telephone. All those means of getting in touch are options…” ( Technology Counts, Education Week, February 3, 2010). So again, it's a matter of learning to use what's available (and learning it well enough to teach some students and keep up with the others!) Luckily, I am pretty good at writing; but I don’t think that’s good enough since I have had many students tell me that they really don’t understand some things until it is read aloud to them. So I will have to learn more about skype and including podcasts or similar in content. It makes me a little nervous to think that the majority of content might be controlled by some vendor. Based on what I’ve experienced in several textbook adoptions, vendors are really good at selling and usually not as good at teaching. That said, even if we have awesome content, fantastic tech training, etc., there are still those students who don’t “get it” without someone walking them through it. I’ll need to expand my knowledge of tools to help those kids. The advantage is that, in online learning, I can work with one child at a time without worrying about one of my taggers adding his or her artwork to the inside cover of a text book the moment I'm otherwise occupied.
I have pretty good time management skills, communication skills, and my current position requires constant checking-in and monitoring not only students assignments, understanding, and grades, but their exact hours of attendance and equivalent work hours in their course(s). I'm not worried about the intensity of the job at this point because I'm used to "intense."
Organizing content is something that I work on a lot in the classroom. The challenge here seems to be front-loaded in terms of time and is required upfront in the course. As I said in the first reflection, I know that the organization of online content and pacing are the things that I need help with and was the impetus in taking this course. So I'm lookin' forward to Module 3.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Personal Learning Goals for Leading Edge Certification
Personal Learning Goals for Leading Edge Certification
The main reason I selected this course, besides the fact
that CTAP has always delivered useful and meaningful instruction, is that I see
that society is continuing to increase our dependence and application of
technology. In order to strengthen my
own technical ability (I am considered part of the “paper-trained” generation,
after all) and make myself adaptable as an educator, I know I need to further
my education. Being better educated
myself means I can be a better asset to my students and my district. Specifically, I am interested in being able
to teach the occasional elective or, as my district is expanding online
programs, I’d like to be able to teach an online course if the need or
opportunity should arise.
As we were asked to review several resources to determine
our readiness for online education, I was struck by three things. First, the so-called survey had “wrong”
answers! Perhaps this is an English
teacher phenomenon, but I was surprised that my honest answer, ‘I’m not sure
how I feel about technology,’ was not a scaled issue, but a flatly wrong
answer. I realize this is beside the
point, but it does reinforce one of my concerns as a regular classroom teacher
in this century: how do I keep the content of computer-related activities relevant
to tech savvy students without overwhelming my students who, for numerous
reasons, just have not been exposed to very much technology? While the colorful, animated, multi-layered
glitz of web content is going to be attractive for students, is it really
better for those students who are easily distracted or, and I’ve had a couple
of these, adept hackers? (I mean, I’m a
little tempted to go and check my facebook and email accounts right now, but I’m
pretty disciplined and won’t until the work is completed – but there are
students who will lose their phones in class every day because they just cannot
seem to stop themselves). Obviously, I’m
in the course, so I see a lot of positive potential, but I like to think I’m
taking with me a healthy dose of reality.
Second, I noticed, as I trolled different "how to be a
good online student" surveys and advice columns (including how important
it is to keep a clean home! Like students have tons of time to think worry
about things like that never quite shrinking pile of laundry that needs to get
done...eventually...), that it matters how the information is organized, how it
looks, how easy it is to get from one page to another, the links, etc. It really helped, for instance, to know that I
could click and drag URLs to become bookmarks in Firefox or right click and
open in a new tab so I didn't have to worry about going back and forth. These are simple things, but I'd be having so
much trouble without them! Still, just
to be sure I really didn’t lose track of information, I went ahead and bought
the Evernote app from Google play.
There is so much out there, and so much more out there everyday, that I see I will also need a way to
network and review new technologies to stay abreast of developments. RSS feeds and blogs and CTAP in particular
are great resources, but I don’t always have time or energy to investigate
things as much as I would like. Even if
I did, I need a blue print to be able to incorporate such into classroom use.
Finally, I see that I need the help of re-envisioning instruction
without the advantage of face-to-face time.
I’ve always relied on student expressions, immediate questions (from kids
and random assessment), progress, and so forth of regular classroom management
to help me determine how well students are engaged and understanding content. I can convey a LOT of meaning through simple
facial expressions or modulating my voice – always to fit the
circumstances. Kids like my passion, I
like theirs, and a lot of that comes through in interaction. So again, organizing
and presenting online content is
becoming the center of this learning trip.
As far as readiness goes, I scored a “B” on the survey from Foothill College, indicating
I’m generally ready for online learning.
I’m glad to hear that since I’ve completed two online courses
already. But those were a couple summers
ago when my kids generally slept at the same times. I like the asynchronous nature of online
learning as…well…life happens.
Scheduling a specific time(s) is a good idea, but not always
possible. Between changing practice
times for my sports stars, the inevitable network or car troubles, and a full
workload, it’s hard to meet at a regular time (and honestly, 7:00 on a
weeknight was havoc for me, but probably ideal for many others). Obviously, I lost that point in the
survey. On the other hand, I’m an avid
reader and a competent writer – I cannot say the same for all of my students,
particularly the ones who are most interested in not having teachers push them
to become better readers or writers. I
won’t be able to spend 12 hours a week "studying," but I doubt I’ll need to since
I read well and fast and I’ll be doing other things (sorting laundry, doing
dishes, waiting in line at the grocery store) while mulling over coursework or
even typing. I’m sitting in a salon now
while one of my kids gets a trim. This
is a dedicated act, but not really dedicated time. The nice thing about online courses is that
the deadlines are not the end of an hour class. I am concerned about the level of tech expertise
required to learn online for myself and my students, but I’m a good student and
a good classroom teacher, so here I am.
I’m ready to advance my career and become a better teacher,
especially for online teaching and learning.
I want to focus on the organization and the best (current) ways to get
content across in a variety of instructional venues from traditional to purely
online. And I'm certainly ready to do this online.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Thoughts on Learning Theories and Instruction
Now that my first online course is coming to a close, I have thought about what technology means to me personally, and what learning means to me. I wish above all that I could inspire my students to think of learning as I do.
I am not as purely constructivist as I imagined myself to be. I love to make connections, of course. In fact, at my son’s Back to School Night this week, his Computer I teacher shared a video which covered technological evolution and its impact on society. The video was probably less than five minutes long, but it relates to some of what this course has made me think about. Two things stood out for me in light of this course: the amount of original production and information that was published on the web between 2006 and 2008 exceeded the amount of recorded information for the last 5,000 years of civilization, and the students of 2006 are being asked to solve problems in technologically related careers that did not exist when they were students (and the video is already two years old). It made me think about the difference between how people are typically educated, and what is actually required to navigate society and find a ‘good’ job. We have to teach them the up and coming technology, but also how to problem solve. And it’s sometimes difficult to motivate students to solve problems whether or not they relate to their lives because so many of the students in my experience refuse to think for themselves when they can connect to the web and find readymade answers on Ask.com and the like. I still don’t have answers for some of my questions – such as how can we possibly motivate a person who desires to “fit in with” a culture where participating in any academic area is practically taboo? Is the relative isolation of the online environment the best option for these students? Or is the behavior so ingrained(habit) that no amount of incentive can overcome the conditioning (until perhaps they experience a lifestyle change and become adept adult learners)?
These questions nag at me because I am at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy: I consider myself to be a thinker and a writer and a teacher (and so a learner), therefore, I learn. I learn actively. I search out new information in a dozen ways – watching Chasing Mummies on television this evening, listening occasionally to MPR (though I rarely have five minutes of quiet to engage in those reports), reviewing math with my Jr. High Student off of (gulp) paper, and finding healthier no-salt and no-cholesterol recipes online for an ailing relative online. I also see connections between the food we eat and health and how the Ancient Egyptians were also quite aware of the effects of various foods and herbs. It’s fascinating. Learning is enjoyable. The door is wide open. This course has brought my own metacognition into working memory insofar as I am very aware of what I’m doing as I’m learning and integrating what I know with these new tidbits of information. Maybe it’s not that working memory is so freakishly long as it is that I’m pretty adept at organizing new schema and transferring between organizational methods. Whichever it is, I have been very aware this month of how ridiculously active my mind is even while watching television, and I see why some of my students in the past have been a little annoyed when I force them to analyze a media they are used to passively absorbing. Once those synapses form, it’s really hard to make them stop firing. Yet I wonder why anyone would want to stop them.
Understanding how learning occurs is interesting in so many ways as well. I think one striking realization for me was that learning on purpose is as much a behavior as it is a cognitive process of connections through a variety of experiences and social/environment lenses. Students with cognitive abilities sit in a social environment to construct new knowledge into meaningful learning. It’s all happening, and extremely complex, but successful learners make it a habit to learn. Last week, I asked my youngest daughter what she had done during her second day of school. She answered, “I don’t know.” When I asked her why she did not know, she told me, “Because I didn’t try to remember, so my brain just forgot it.” She’s only six, but she is already aware that it takes a conscious decision to learn. Based on the course and experiences as a learner and teacher (and partly on my insightful six-year-old’s revelation), I know that motivation is a huge factor in whether information ever finds a home in a person’s brain. A motivated learner will find a way to encode and learn to some extent; passive learners may or may not. Accommodating all learning styles is likely to help, but with the world changing so exponentially fast, I know I would perform a better service to give students the tools to solve problems, to make different styles of delivery work for them, than to cater to every changing preference. Giving students the tools, getting them to encode, is how we can make sure that they are able to successfully navigate the adult world.
Technology is an incredible tool to provide a variety of experiences and touch on several modalities in each lesson. I was surprised – and a little relieved – to see our readings take into account that the same technology can be as much an obstacle as a path. It’s easy to forget, sitting in that computer classroom at my son’s junior high school, that not every person has the kind of privileged access to technology as so many of us enjoy and take for granted. So seeing ways to help scaffold and support the less technologically savvy is well appreciated. Even as I’ve become much more comfortable in this online environment, I still feel like I have only touched the tip of the iceberg – there’s so much more out there to learn, and there’s going to be even more tomorrow.
I learned a lot about teaching theories in my teacher-prep program. Connectivism is new and, while I’m still not completely sold on the idea that it is a new stand-alone theory, it did make me think about how much technology is changing what we do and how we do it. In two years the world (only the world connected online) produced more information than the past 5,000 years. That says a lot, but more importantly – how can we possibly learn enough? It makes sense that some of our knowledge has to be stored away, like recipes in a cookbook, for those occasions when we need them. I have a vast repertoire of recipes, but only a few dozen are ingrained enough that I don’t have to stop and review my cookbook on occasion.
Specifically for my teaching career, I know that I will have to model more, expose students to more than one or two activity types to make sure information finds a home in their own varied schema. I am inspired to do more with experiential learning, and to continue with the constructivist approaches. This course has opened my eyes to the many ways in which students might need support as they deal with technology, and I really want to learn more about making online animations and interactive applications that will engage students – even if some of their motivation is from the novelty of the presentation. Introducing complicated reading with a cartoon-scenario would be a fun way to make students familiar with the plot of, for example Hamlet, instead of summaries – or having students make their own storyboard presentations where their talents could be published might get kids a little more excited about reading something that is practically in a foreign language to them. I want to make tutorials on how to do this for students. I want to incorporate blogs and wikis in my class; I want to make information as interesting and readily available to students outside of the classroom as inside. (I know I can be entertaining in person, but that does not always come across so well in text format). It’s exciting, and I feel fired up to continue learning!
I am not as purely constructivist as I imagined myself to be. I love to make connections, of course. In fact, at my son’s Back to School Night this week, his Computer I teacher shared a video which covered technological evolution and its impact on society. The video was probably less than five minutes long, but it relates to some of what this course has made me think about. Two things stood out for me in light of this course: the amount of original production and information that was published on the web between 2006 and 2008 exceeded the amount of recorded information for the last 5,000 years of civilization, and the students of 2006 are being asked to solve problems in technologically related careers that did not exist when they were students (and the video is already two years old). It made me think about the difference between how people are typically educated, and what is actually required to navigate society and find a ‘good’ job. We have to teach them the up and coming technology, but also how to problem solve. And it’s sometimes difficult to motivate students to solve problems whether or not they relate to their lives because so many of the students in my experience refuse to think for themselves when they can connect to the web and find readymade answers on Ask.com and the like. I still don’t have answers for some of my questions – such as how can we possibly motivate a person who desires to “fit in with” a culture where participating in any academic area is practically taboo? Is the relative isolation of the online environment the best option for these students? Or is the behavior so ingrained(habit) that no amount of incentive can overcome the conditioning (until perhaps they experience a lifestyle change and become adept adult learners)?
These questions nag at me because I am at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy: I consider myself to be a thinker and a writer and a teacher (and so a learner), therefore, I learn. I learn actively. I search out new information in a dozen ways – watching Chasing Mummies on television this evening, listening occasionally to MPR (though I rarely have five minutes of quiet to engage in those reports), reviewing math with my Jr. High Student off of (gulp) paper, and finding healthier no-salt and no-cholesterol recipes online for an ailing relative online. I also see connections between the food we eat and health and how the Ancient Egyptians were also quite aware of the effects of various foods and herbs. It’s fascinating. Learning is enjoyable. The door is wide open. This course has brought my own metacognition into working memory insofar as I am very aware of what I’m doing as I’m learning and integrating what I know with these new tidbits of information. Maybe it’s not that working memory is so freakishly long as it is that I’m pretty adept at organizing new schema and transferring between organizational methods. Whichever it is, I have been very aware this month of how ridiculously active my mind is even while watching television, and I see why some of my students in the past have been a little annoyed when I force them to analyze a media they are used to passively absorbing. Once those synapses form, it’s really hard to make them stop firing. Yet I wonder why anyone would want to stop them.
Understanding how learning occurs is interesting in so many ways as well. I think one striking realization for me was that learning on purpose is as much a behavior as it is a cognitive process of connections through a variety of experiences and social/environment lenses. Students with cognitive abilities sit in a social environment to construct new knowledge into meaningful learning. It’s all happening, and extremely complex, but successful learners make it a habit to learn. Last week, I asked my youngest daughter what she had done during her second day of school. She answered, “I don’t know.” When I asked her why she did not know, she told me, “Because I didn’t try to remember, so my brain just forgot it.” She’s only six, but she is already aware that it takes a conscious decision to learn. Based on the course and experiences as a learner and teacher (and partly on my insightful six-year-old’s revelation), I know that motivation is a huge factor in whether information ever finds a home in a person’s brain. A motivated learner will find a way to encode and learn to some extent; passive learners may or may not. Accommodating all learning styles is likely to help, but with the world changing so exponentially fast, I know I would perform a better service to give students the tools to solve problems, to make different styles of delivery work for them, than to cater to every changing preference. Giving students the tools, getting them to encode, is how we can make sure that they are able to successfully navigate the adult world.
Technology is an incredible tool to provide a variety of experiences and touch on several modalities in each lesson. I was surprised – and a little relieved – to see our readings take into account that the same technology can be as much an obstacle as a path. It’s easy to forget, sitting in that computer classroom at my son’s junior high school, that not every person has the kind of privileged access to technology as so many of us enjoy and take for granted. So seeing ways to help scaffold and support the less technologically savvy is well appreciated. Even as I’ve become much more comfortable in this online environment, I still feel like I have only touched the tip of the iceberg – there’s so much more out there to learn, and there’s going to be even more tomorrow.
I learned a lot about teaching theories in my teacher-prep program. Connectivism is new and, while I’m still not completely sold on the idea that it is a new stand-alone theory, it did make me think about how much technology is changing what we do and how we do it. In two years the world (only the world connected online) produced more information than the past 5,000 years. That says a lot, but more importantly – how can we possibly learn enough? It makes sense that some of our knowledge has to be stored away, like recipes in a cookbook, for those occasions when we need them. I have a vast repertoire of recipes, but only a few dozen are ingrained enough that I don’t have to stop and review my cookbook on occasion.
Specifically for my teaching career, I know that I will have to model more, expose students to more than one or two activity types to make sure information finds a home in their own varied schema. I am inspired to do more with experiential learning, and to continue with the constructivist approaches. This course has opened my eyes to the many ways in which students might need support as they deal with technology, and I really want to learn more about making online animations and interactive applications that will engage students – even if some of their motivation is from the novelty of the presentation. Introducing complicated reading with a cartoon-scenario would be a fun way to make students familiar with the plot of, for example Hamlet, instead of summaries – or having students make their own storyboard presentations where their talents could be published might get kids a little more excited about reading something that is practically in a foreign language to them. I want to make tutorials on how to do this for students. I want to incorporate blogs and wikis in my class; I want to make information as interesting and readily available to students outside of the classroom as inside. (I know I can be entertaining in person, but that does not always come across so well in text format). It’s exciting, and I feel fired up to continue learning!
Friday, August 13, 2010
In this bog, the last for my Learning Theories and Design Course at Walden U., I will be reflecting on my own learning styles, preferences, and the role technology plays in these. At the beginning of our course, we were asked to identify the type of learners we are, and I responded with the following:
At the (almost) end of the course, we are asked to re-evaluate our responses based on what we have learned in the course:
• Now that you have a deeper understanding of the different learning theories and learning styles, how has your view on how you learn changed?
• What have you learned about the various learning theories and learning styles over the past weeks that can further explain your own personal learning preferences?
• What role does technology play in your learning (i.e., as a way to search for information, to record information, to create, etc.)?
I do not feel my understanding of the different learning theories has changed the way I view my own learning, but I am reminded (as I often remind my students) that the social aspect of those building blocks we use to construct our knowledge of the world is as important as ever, especially considering the way that technology is constantly streaming a more global culture into our lives. I still see the individual learner as the locus of learning per se, but the institution of education is also a preserver of social traditions and values.
Again, I know I am freakishly adept at learning in all manner of styles. Thankfully, the reading we did by Gilbert and Swanier (2008) made me feel a little less like an oddball since people's preferences appear to fluctuate. Generally, I prefer to do more individual activities, and I love reading just about everything I can lay my eyes on, but I also appreciate a good lecture or interview with or without any visual, and manipulatives or movement are usually at least entertaining, and I love the actual aesthetics of writing and drawing even though I find typing much more efficient. I tend to purposely relate information I learn to stuff I already know - which came in really handy when I was learning Spanish since so many words share similar roots like "edifice" and "edifico" - so the cognitivist/constructive theories still apply pretty well.
Technology is encompassing ever more of our lives - honesty, how far are we from implantable devices for which we can serve as the battery? - so the ways I use technology are changing. I appreciate the ability to quickly access a variety of information, store it, "write" or create (though I am fairly paper trained in terms of prewiritng, drafting, planning, etc. because no single screen can hold everything the way a desk of several papers can). Technology opens up an avenue for more individuals to take in and put out whatever they choose. There is an audience for everything and every audience has a leader.
I think the point of the learning theories is that, no matter the course or style of delivery, it is still the individual (the learner situated in a social environment, equipped with various dendrites and synapses) that is left with the task of interpretation, the meaning-making and value-attributing, as well as the decision of whether to do anything with these building blocks of information.
“Having taken a number of those surveys and quizzes to determine my learning style, I have tons of evidence to support that I am an abstract thinker rely as much on creativity as knowledge to problem solve and produce. I can learn in all kinds of environments in multiple styles. At the same time, I have been forced to recognize that this is a freakish quality, and most people are less comfortable beginning with abstract conclusions (unless they have extremely practical knowledge of something similar). There is something powerful in the concrete.
I think I see general education as being both constructivist and cognitive. In fact, they both seem to have very similar assumptions that the brain must build on what it knows and observes. We relate new knowledge, or situate it physiologically, based on established knowledge and "mental schema."
Understanding and reviewing instructional theories will redefine and reinforce the ways I approach teaching and designing effective instruction for students.”
At the (almost) end of the course, we are asked to re-evaluate our responses based on what we have learned in the course:
• Now that you have a deeper understanding of the different learning theories and learning styles, how has your view on how you learn changed?
• What have you learned about the various learning theories and learning styles over the past weeks that can further explain your own personal learning preferences?
• What role does technology play in your learning (i.e., as a way to search for information, to record information, to create, etc.)?
I do not feel my understanding of the different learning theories has changed the way I view my own learning, but I am reminded (as I often remind my students) that the social aspect of those building blocks we use to construct our knowledge of the world is as important as ever, especially considering the way that technology is constantly streaming a more global culture into our lives. I still see the individual learner as the locus of learning per se, but the institution of education is also a preserver of social traditions and values.
Again, I know I am freakishly adept at learning in all manner of styles. Thankfully, the reading we did by Gilbert and Swanier (2008) made me feel a little less like an oddball since people's preferences appear to fluctuate. Generally, I prefer to do more individual activities, and I love reading just about everything I can lay my eyes on, but I also appreciate a good lecture or interview with or without any visual, and manipulatives or movement are usually at least entertaining, and I love the actual aesthetics of writing and drawing even though I find typing much more efficient. I tend to purposely relate information I learn to stuff I already know - which came in really handy when I was learning Spanish since so many words share similar roots like "edifice" and "edifico" - so the cognitivist/constructive theories still apply pretty well.
Technology is encompassing ever more of our lives - honesty, how far are we from implantable devices for which we can serve as the battery? - so the ways I use technology are changing. I appreciate the ability to quickly access a variety of information, store it, "write" or create (though I am fairly paper trained in terms of prewiritng, drafting, planning, etc. because no single screen can hold everything the way a desk of several papers can). Technology opens up an avenue for more individuals to take in and put out whatever they choose. There is an audience for everything and every audience has a leader.
I think the point of the learning theories is that, no matter the course or style of delivery, it is still the individual (the learner situated in a social environment, equipped with various dendrites and synapses) that is left with the task of interpretation, the meaning-making and value-attributing, as well as the decision of whether to do anything with these building blocks of information.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Connectivism
The idea for connectivism, to encode it my own way, would be that the nature of accessing knowledge has changed drastically with technological advancements so that now, instead of only trusting to indoctrinated experts/researchers and edited publications, we also access knowledge through a variety of instantly gratifying ways which include people (of varying and diasporic knowledge themselves), gadgets (of which Siemens seems to exclude traditional books, but that might be extremely judgmental me) and the internet/gadgets we use to access the web and all its dot numbers.
So how does this all work with what we've learned? This question has filled those hours of doing dishes and trying to fall asleep when the A/C decides it's had a hard day, too. It doesn't seem mutually exclusive with any theory in that it supports the structural building that contructivists support, the behavioristic (almost compulsively so) patterns of behavior that behaviorists might look into, and the bi-polar internal brain workings within a societal/communal environment of postmodernists and other -ists. These thoughts led me to the mind map below.
I focused only on the learning support network. The three most important groupings I could think of were People, Myself, and Technology. I realize that it might seem just a tad egocentric to put myself there, but I still, perhaps archaically, think that the learner (myself) is the most important part of the learning equation (and yes, I see that the learner is invested in all the limiting elements of a particular society or culture, but that's the background of the mindmap, not a separate resource. To quote one of my favorite teaching experts, I am the source, all these other things I use are my resources.)
People: I started out with experts because, when I'm learning in a formal way, I like to be able to have an expert - hence my willingness to pay tuition, right? That seemed obvious. Educators, myself included, rely on researchers and theorists and the publications of these groups. I also have learned and continue to enjoy learning from colleagues and peers when we are focusing specifically on educational matters. But then I thought about how often I talk to my colleagues, family and friends, students and others about these issues, and I learn a lot about other values. Getting to know the students and seeing how others are problem solving had taught me a lot. None so much as dealing with my own children at home about how every child is unique and how different generations (even a few years' difference) can change the way people think - or at least what they will relate to easily. Finally, I am an observer all the time, so I rely on my own observations and theories to problem solve and challenge my preconceived notions of life in general.
Technology is opening up to me. I've never been intimidated, but there have been times where I felt like something was brand new and students or colleagues had been using it for ever. There have also been areas of technology - blogging, for instance - where I kinda know about it but, because of something one of my closest friends refers to as "Tyranny of the Urgent," I needed some outside source to prompt me to fully investigate it. That said, the computer is probably the single most important technological source. It has this nifty internet that - much to some students' surprise, is not just for entertainment after all! There are thousands of resources such as blogs, wikis, wikipedia (I know, as a starting point only), databases, publications, history, humanity, etc. The TV, phone, and recording devices deserve credit here - I am such a Discovery Channel and History fan that they ought to pay me for PR.
The "thing" that matters here, though, is me. It's my experiences and my previous learning that allows me to connect this information in meaningful ways (and then re-present this encoded learning). It's my other, non-related knowledge from the History Channel or that Ursula LeGuin novel that allows me to make up metaphors and mnemonic devices and models (or borrow others') that allows me to retain information (and pass it along). It's me choosing to identify myself as a learner and taking time to reflect (as opposed to just zoning out in front of a sit com) that makes the information stick in my brain, related to lots of different little branches in the magic trees that are our brains - which I'm not sure fits with the connectivism theory. It's my own questions that motivate me to find more information, to learn more.
I'm not sure my network has changed the way I learn. It has changed at times the way I access new information, but the basics are still fundamental - I'm reading articles and people's opinions online as much as in books and magazines. I'm listening to web lectures as I listen to my friends and co-workers. I'm watching presentations online as I would watch my latest favorite serial documentary Chasing Mummies. I am even taking the time to reflect on this as I take time to reflect on the last novel I've read. I even caught The Simpsons this evening and enjoyed how the plot related to Orwell's 1984 and marveled at how MLK Jr's famous speech can relate to every kind of stereotyping when Lisa paralleled elements of the speech in her diatribe against stereotyping blondes - and all of you probably get all these references because the concepts of Big Brother and "I Have a Dream" and even the blond stereotype are ingrained in our culture. To take a longer view, I assume I began learning by merely observing and mimicking as all infants seem to do. At some point the habit of learning became ingrained, and all of this network has only added to a learning organization that was already there.
I enjoy the ease of access to information that the web offers. Accessing books online is convenient in a lot of ways (and much less expensive!) but I like that I can pick up our course text book to read at the park while the kids roam and I don't have to worry about things like the battery in a laptop dieing. As Jurassic as this probably makes me sound, my phone is for conversations and the occasional text or digital picture when I forget my camera. Instantly looking up something is not of much interest to me since I can set something on my back burner and get around to it later. There's usually something else I need to focus on in the now.
Which brings me to the next point for pondering: How do I get new knowledge when I have questions. How don't I? It is entirely dependent on the situation. I ask questions. I try to problem solve. I make a mental note and later refer to some resource whether digital or not. I have even been known, when faced with an especially difficult quandary, to sit myself down and write until an answer occurs to me, or call a friend to discuss - although, I probably wouldn't do this for the average math problem.
My personal support system does not refute the concept of connectivism as a phenomenon of modern civilization. Information is spread out between people and caches of all shapes and models. Our access to such information is ridiculously easy when compared to such access even 25 years ago. But. Connectivism moves the focus of learning from individual understanding in the interest of conceptualizing the complexity of knowledge. It's interesting, but a system-based and visualized knowledge doesn't really seem new to me - visualizing and re-visualizing is something we do anyway, we connect knowledge to other knowledge in internal schema anyway, the most complex systems we have are still typically understood a little bit at a time anyway. It's nice to have a name or -ism for it, I suppose.
So how does this all work with what we've learned? This question has filled those hours of doing dishes and trying to fall asleep when the A/C decides it's had a hard day, too. It doesn't seem mutually exclusive with any theory in that it supports the structural building that contructivists support, the behavioristic (almost compulsively so) patterns of behavior that behaviorists might look into, and the bi-polar internal brain workings within a societal/communal environment of postmodernists and other -ists. These thoughts led me to the mind map below.
I focused only on the learning support network. The three most important groupings I could think of were People, Myself, and Technology. I realize that it might seem just a tad egocentric to put myself there, but I still, perhaps archaically, think that the learner (myself) is the most important part of the learning equation (and yes, I see that the learner is invested in all the limiting elements of a particular society or culture, but that's the background of the mindmap, not a separate resource. To quote one of my favorite teaching experts, I am the source, all these other things I use are my resources.)
People: I started out with experts because, when I'm learning in a formal way, I like to be able to have an expert - hence my willingness to pay tuition, right? That seemed obvious. Educators, myself included, rely on researchers and theorists and the publications of these groups. I also have learned and continue to enjoy learning from colleagues and peers when we are focusing specifically on educational matters. But then I thought about how often I talk to my colleagues, family and friends, students and others about these issues, and I learn a lot about other values. Getting to know the students and seeing how others are problem solving had taught me a lot. None so much as dealing with my own children at home about how every child is unique and how different generations (even a few years' difference) can change the way people think - or at least what they will relate to easily. Finally, I am an observer all the time, so I rely on my own observations and theories to problem solve and challenge my preconceived notions of life in general.
Technology is opening up to me. I've never been intimidated, but there have been times where I felt like something was brand new and students or colleagues had been using it for ever. There have also been areas of technology - blogging, for instance - where I kinda know about it but, because of something one of my closest friends refers to as "Tyranny of the Urgent," I needed some outside source to prompt me to fully investigate it. That said, the computer is probably the single most important technological source. It has this nifty internet that - much to some students' surprise, is not just for entertainment after all! There are thousands of resources such as blogs, wikis, wikipedia (I know, as a starting point only), databases, publications, history, humanity, etc. The TV, phone, and recording devices deserve credit here - I am such a Discovery Channel and History fan that they ought to pay me for PR.
The "thing" that matters here, though, is me. It's my experiences and my previous learning that allows me to connect this information in meaningful ways (and then re-present this encoded learning). It's my other, non-related knowledge from the History Channel or that Ursula LeGuin novel that allows me to make up metaphors and mnemonic devices and models (or borrow others') that allows me to retain information (and pass it along). It's me choosing to identify myself as a learner and taking time to reflect (as opposed to just zoning out in front of a sit com) that makes the information stick in my brain, related to lots of different little branches in the magic trees that are our brains - which I'm not sure fits with the connectivism theory. It's my own questions that motivate me to find more information, to learn more.
I'm not sure my network has changed the way I learn. It has changed at times the way I access new information, but the basics are still fundamental - I'm reading articles and people's opinions online as much as in books and magazines. I'm listening to web lectures as I listen to my friends and co-workers. I'm watching presentations online as I would watch my latest favorite serial documentary Chasing Mummies. I am even taking the time to reflect on this as I take time to reflect on the last novel I've read. I even caught The Simpsons this evening and enjoyed how the plot related to Orwell's 1984 and marveled at how MLK Jr's famous speech can relate to every kind of stereotyping when Lisa paralleled elements of the speech in her diatribe against stereotyping blondes - and all of you probably get all these references because the concepts of Big Brother and "I Have a Dream" and even the blond stereotype are ingrained in our culture. To take a longer view, I assume I began learning by merely observing and mimicking as all infants seem to do. At some point the habit of learning became ingrained, and all of this network has only added to a learning organization that was already there.
I enjoy the ease of access to information that the web offers. Accessing books online is convenient in a lot of ways (and much less expensive!) but I like that I can pick up our course text book to read at the park while the kids roam and I don't have to worry about things like the battery in a laptop dieing. As Jurassic as this probably makes me sound, my phone is for conversations and the occasional text or digital picture when I forget my camera. Instantly looking up something is not of much interest to me since I can set something on my back burner and get around to it later. There's usually something else I need to focus on in the now.
Which brings me to the next point for pondering: How do I get new knowledge when I have questions. How don't I? It is entirely dependent on the situation. I ask questions. I try to problem solve. I make a mental note and later refer to some resource whether digital or not. I have even been known, when faced with an especially difficult quandary, to sit myself down and write until an answer occurs to me, or call a friend to discuss - although, I probably wouldn't do this for the average math problem.
My personal support system does not refute the concept of connectivism as a phenomenon of modern civilization. Information is spread out between people and caches of all shapes and models. Our access to such information is ridiculously easy when compared to such access even 25 years ago. But. Connectivism moves the focus of learning from individual understanding in the interest of conceptualizing the complexity of knowledge. It's interesting, but a system-based and visualized knowledge doesn't really seem new to me - visualizing and re-visualizing is something we do anyway, we connect knowledge to other knowledge in internal schema anyway, the most complex systems we have are still typically understood a little bit at a time anyway. It's nice to have a name or -ism for it, I suppose.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Learning Mind Map
http://mywebspiration.com/view/494806a1679f
My Learning Network Resource Map outline
• People
• Family
• Colleagues
• Friends
• Sounding Boards and fellow learners
• Common Sense Gurus
• Experts
• Educators
• Producers of theories and discourse
• e.g. Vygotsky
• Authors and Content Producers
• e.g. Laureate Education, Inc., Dr. Jean Ormrod
• Also fiction like Ursula LeGuin and Terry Pratchett
• Researchers
• e.g. Piaget, Siemens
• Students (reflection)
• Seminars (temporary learning communities)
• e.g. CTAP on the Road, webinars, PD conferences like AVID
• Preservers and Agitators of a Common Culture/Environment
• Myself
• Experiences
• Loosing my first tooth
• Getting along with mom
• Dad's death
• Life...
• Previous Knowledge
• My Brain (that is conditioned and primed to learn, makes connections between prior knowledge and metaphors and models) and my "habits" that make me an expert learner:)
• Reflection
• Identitiy as a Learner
• Culture
• Conforming/preserving
• Resisting/critiqueing
• Technology
• Basic
• phones (connect to other people)
• emails
• TV/Movies
• e.g. documentaries, characterizing fictional accounts of life like Boston Public
• Cameras
• Computer
• Programs
• e.g. Adobe, Microsoft Word
• Content Producers
• Publishers
• e.g. Writer's Inc.
• Youtube, teacher tube, forum for experts and others to publish materials
• Internet
• Google!
• email, search engines, web 2.0
• Blogs, RSS Readers
• e.g. http://www.connectivism.ca/
• online courses
• e.g. Walden, Phoenix, Capella
• collaboration tools and sites like wikis
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