Teaching in 2011

I have been a student and an instructor in both online and face-to-face learning environments.  I believe both types of learning have the place and their value in the educational community.  As how we learn evolves, the new technology will become increasingly important.  When calculators and word processors took to schools, schools accepted the convenience they provided their students.  As the technology provided more, for the most part, the education community accepted it.  Now we learn at a whole different level because of technology.   Sometimes I look at my struggling math students and I am not sure some of changes are good.

Change is inevitable.  Learners memorize less and are able to dig deeper into the concepts or idea.  This allows students to discover what is important in that concept or idea.  Allowing a student to discover their learning is, at times, very difficult for students to do.  My high school students think the teachers should spoon-feed them the information they need for their next test.  True learning has no applications.  When a teacher stands back and says why or explain, the student is often times lost.   They only learned what was given to them and didn’t make the connection to anything else.  However, my online students are required to read the text and work the examples.  They need to figure out a lot of the information on their own.  I am there to facilitate the learning and answer their questions.  I guide the discussion to make sure the students cover the concepts required.  The students make the connections to prior knowledge and to their lives.  Making the student do the work to learn has a great deal of advantages. 

How could ARCS have helped??

Our school system implemented a new electronic grade book program.  It was connected to our attendance and report card software.  We were told to start using this program two years ago.  Many people had problems with the grade book and couldn’t figure out how to work it.  In addition we had many teachers who would rather keep their grades in a hard copy grade book.  The resistance was great among most teachers.  This system was to help reduce our paperwork.  Many teachers just plain refused to use the system.  Others used the system unsuccessfully and became frustrated.

I believe this system would have worked better if our teachers had had someone supporting and training them on the new system using the ARCS program.  Our teachers were never trained on this system.  Therefore, there was a great deal of frustration.    We could have gotten the teachers attention by making sure they understood the relevance of the grade book.  If we could have explain how much this new program will lighten their load  (Driscoll, 2005).  In addition, our teachers needed trained on this new system and then they needed support to help them when they had problems.  Many times our teachers gave up when they ran into problems.  This support would have given our teachers the confidence to continue with the grade book even if problems arose.  After we saw the grade book worked properly and experienced how much easier this grade book made things, I believe the resistance would have been lessened. 

Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Allyn and Bacon.

Connectivism

I remember attending school and never breaking out a calculator because my parents didn’t have the money to buy a big 10 key calculator.  That calculator can now be purchased for $1.   Learning is so much different now than then.  We are more interested understand what the facts mean instead of just the facts.  We are constantly attempting to connect our learning to the world around us.  I help my students do just that through the Internet.  I have a couple of Web Quests that I require my students to complete.  This helps them realize how what they are learning is really connected to the real world.  A lot of times young people start to thing that we are just making them learn this or that because we are told to.  If I can help my students see the connections they are much more eager to learn.  I use the Internet to help me facilitate learning in my classroom.

When I have a question, I find the appropriate journal online to answer it.  I typically Google the subject in question and find a reliable source to glean the information from.

• How can technology facilitate collaboration among learners based on constructivist principles?

There are many companies that work in groups.  I am on several working groups in my school system.  One of those groups is to look at and adjust our teacher evaluation model so it really measures teacher effectiveness.  This has been a two-year venture.  However, I couldn’t have done this without a group.  We needed to melding of ideas to come up with the best model.  In a group there will be “pushback” from different members about different ideas.  Without this pushback there would be very little thought or investigation into different ideas and thoughts.  Therefore, I do believe that when we are creating something large (i.e. Wikipedia, evacuation model, and so on) we do gravitate to or have a basic instinct to “interact and work as a group.”

During the summer of 2009 and 2010, I worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratories.  This organization is the definition of group work.  Oak Ridge is only one National Laboratories of many Laboratories.  Inside the Laboratory, the campus is splintered in many different divisions.  These divisions work cooperatively to a common goal.  These accomplishments are shared with the necessary parties in other departments and other Laboratories.  This information will be used to advance collaborative work somewhere else.  Without the advent of technology, this type of work would be difficult to share knowledge and discoveries.

Constructivist’s principles are woven directly into everything that happens at Oak Ridge.  There are self-directed learning, collaborative learning, and critical analysis.  The world of technology has expanded our world to such an extent that I have had conversations with people that never would have taken place.  Being able to tap into these multitudes of resources to solve problems is part of the definition of constructivists. 

http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:5-nX6K2SafkJ:scholar.google.com/+an+effective+tool+for+learning+is+collaboration&hl=en&as_sdt=0,43

The different isms.

I was once told that an effective classroom looked like a circus most of the time.  Different centers in different parts of the room testing and teaching different skills in different ways.  Exposing students to all the isms is critical to expanding the learning for all students.  It would be easy to use cognition to teach all my lessons, but it wouldn't be effective.  I would be going over the lessons but very few of my students would understand, retain, or connect the concepts I taught.  Therefore I might as well not have taught anything.  I enjoy teaching and learning how I can teach better.  I must know how a learner learns best.  

Teaching and learning are very complex issues.  Determining how someone learns best is a task within itself.  Bill Kerr brings up the isms and how they interlock.  Whereas Kapp delineates the learning styles by the level of learning they require.  When designing a lesson, I am thinking about my students' behavior, how they are processing the information, and the connections that they will make to their lives.  All three isms must be present for learning and understanding to take place.  I always want my students to remember and connect what I have taught them.  In addition, I want their behavior (written steps) to show that they have this understanding.  Therefore, I concur.  The isms aren't isolated units of thought.  Instead they are interlocking peaces of a larger problem.

Learning theory

What are your beliefs about how people learn best? What is the purpose of learning theory in educational technology?

I have always thought that the way people learn best is by practicing.  The more someone performs a specific skill the more likely they are to remember.  Even though I do believe this works best for most concept based learning, it is not always true.  Many times I can learn connecting new knowledge to past experience.  This is why the study of history is so important. 

The purpose of learning theory in educational technology is to understand how people learn through the use of technology.  Every where I look I see people texting or using the internet.  Twenty years ago, these people would have been the exception and not the the norm.  How did these people learn to how to use this technology?  How can people learn more using the technology?  When I got my first computer, I played a variety of games.  Then I learned how to chat and was amazed at how I could talk to other people that were so far away.  Finally, I started doing research.  I had the computer help make me successful in my face-to-face classrooms.  All of these actions were a learning process.  It is advantageous for producers of these products that I was using to make my learning process obtainable.  They wanted me to use their product.  Therefore, they needed a to determine how to help me learn the process.

For the past several weeks, I have been training to teach at two on-line Universities.  There are many online Universities that are accredited institutions.  Both of the institutions that I have trained at are concerned with the students' learning.  Everyone of them used the discussion posts like we do at Walden University.  A rich discussion blending knowledge from the text and other learners can be help a person grow in knowledge.  Many times we, online, use our prior experience to help others grow and as a springboard to help us develop the knowledge we have.