Personal Learning Theory

This course was one of my favorites so far during my time at Walden. I gained so much insight into the addition of technology into the classroom. What caught me most was not only how and what technology we could use but how it truly could be used to better the learning environment. Students can be engaged in hands on learning, creating artifacts and by doing so they are gaining a greater ability to store the content in to long term memory.




My Personal Learning Theory states: I believe that all students in a classroom are capable of learning. However, each child in a given class is unique in terms of terms of background, beliefs, and experience and therefore all children do not learn best in the same way. Textbooks should be viewed as tools to help learning, but should not be used in isolation alone. Hands on, minds-on activities should be used to enrich the curriculum for any given subject, and cross-curriculum activities should be employed so that children who excel in one area can use that strength to enhance learning in another. Varying activities and assessments must be used throughout the course of the school year so that each of the multiple intelligences is touched upon, providing the opportunity for all students to succeed.



What we learned about the way students learn and the strategies that help to ensure this, only adds to the strong feeling I have that EVERY student can learn, even thou they each may learn best differently!! I look forward to gaining knowledge of more new techniques and strategies that help me to augment my personal learning theory!!

Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

Social Constructivism is defined by Dr. Orey as occurring when students are engaged in constructing artifacts and conversing with others. The active conversation allows the students to concretize and understand the content. Cooperative or Collaborative learning is a prime example of social learning. What I feel is the greatest attribute of this type of learning is that the students are both creating an artifact and engaging with peers at the same time. Construtionism basis its theory on the idea that students learn best when building an external artifact or something they can share with others. Social Constructivism presumes it is best when hands on constructing is combined with the social interactions between peers. Together the idea of collaborative learning brings both of these ideas to the same learning experience. I have always use cooperative learning in my classroom, but after week four and five I can bring new meaning to the importance and effectiveness of this type of learning. As far as technology goes, it has only expanded the possibilities we have to allow students to work together to create meaningful, content rich, external artifacts, that can be not only great learning experiences for them but can be shared with the rest of the class as a way to further the learning experience.

VoiceThread

Here is the link to my VoiceThread. This is the first time I have ever done anything like this so bare with my shaky commentary.

http://voicethread.com/share/889703/

Constructivism in Practice

Week four stressed the importance of the use of Constructionism in today's classroom and how technology has revolutionized our ability to build upon this theory with our students. We could always have our students do hands on activities to enhance our lessons, but with new technology we can now have our students construct artifacts using so many new computer programs. Not only are there word processing programs like Microsoft Word, but Power Point, Exel, and much more. I love hearing about new innovative programs and sometimes I even find a few that are free. I like programs that allow my students to create their own art piece and add text or storylines to go along with them. I know Dr. Orey mentioned in week three, how strong visual images with text can be for allowing our students to make connections. Paivio's Dual Coding Hypothesis states that people can remember images much better then text alone. They store the image but they also store the label attached to it. This makes images really powerful teaching tools! I like the idea that lasts weeks concept mapping tool replicates the network model of memory, therefore hooking information to prior stored knowledge. It also plays into this week’s idea of bringing constructionism into the classroom. By letting my students create and complete their own concept map I am combining the idea of creating a hands on experience with allowing them to process the information into long term memory. To me if I am giving my students this in one activity, it should be a successful one!

Cognitivism in Practice

This week I learned a lot about how advanced organizers can truly be successful tools in helping students to organize their thoughts. When completing the concept map for this week’s application I realized I was learning more about my trip then I thought possible. At the same time I was assessing my prior knowledge on the topic. This would be the same experience my students would have as they completed the concept map for our trip. Concept maps are an example of cognitive learning, as we are mapping or networking our ideas into a visual representation which Dr. Orey says is the use of sensory registers and improves learning by integrating multiple senses. This allows students to better remember the content and store it into long term memory with more than one way to recall the information. The same goes for note taking and summarizing, ques, and questions. All of these instructional stratifies that have embedded technology serve as tools to allow students to remember the most important topics and pieces of information on a topic and attach them to already stored information, therefore making more network connections. Cognitive learning theory stresses the importance of storing information into long-term memory and these instructional strategies all help to make the students active learners, creating numerous connections to stored information and fully comprehending and remembering what has been learned.

How Instructional Stratigies Correlate to Principles of Behaviorst Learning Theory

Week two's resources showed us about the effect of reinforcing effort. Although I have always known that effort correlates with success, I never used any type of tracking system to show my students the importance of effort. Research shows that not all students realize the importance of effort and attribute their success or failure to outside factors (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007.) I always praise the efforts of my students whether it be for behavior, during a lesson, or on an assignment or project. When we begin a new unit I put the learning outcomes up on display in terms they can understand and talk to them about what we can expect to learn and how we will assess our learning throughout the unit. I have used rubrics with my students before to give them an idea of how I will grade a project or assignment, but I really like the idea of doing an effort rubric. The effort rubric in figure 8.1 on page 157 of the text really displays effort in a great way and I am hoping to adapt this to fit my third grade class. The way this correlates to the Behaviorist Theory is the fact that effort is being reinforced. Reinforcement is a part of Operant Conditioning and B.F. Skinner argued that reinforcement was one of the more powerful instructional strategies used to receive a desirable behavior.

We also learned from Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn & Malenoski that Homework and Practice are essential in helping students “apply and review what they have learned. Again B.F. Skinner concluded that the typical classroom instruction consistent with the behaviorist theory includes drill and practice. I too agree that homework is not meant to be busy work but practice to reinforce a specific prior learned skill or concept. I also think that homework that doesn't get feedback or correction and explanation is not proper practice, but only practice in which the students is reinforcing a skill improperly. A version of the drill and practice technique was created by John Saxon. It is called Incremental Review. “It is a technique of instruction that breaks the whole skill into many bits and pieces or fragments. Each fragment is then taught in isolation from the other parts. The individual fragment is usually repeated over long periods of time. The initial instruction involves many problems of the same kind. The child practices this same skill over and over again for many days. However, the number of similar problems is reduced as time goes on. Incremental review simply spreads out the drill and practice over many months.” retrieved from http://www.cornerstonecurriculum.com/Q_A/cornerstone_answers7.htm My school uses the Saxon Math program and it is a very successful way to teach math and its skills. The idea I like best is the way the skills are taught and reinforced through the grade levels. This practice in bits and pieces and repetition are based in the Behaviorist Theory as well.


Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology

This is my first time Blogging and I am excited to write without deadlines, writing rubrics to follow or specific topics!! I am looking forward to the content this new class has to offer and am looking forward to my favorite part of Walden University, learning from my classmates. Teachers are a wealth of knowledge and learn so much more day ot day, year to year, classroom experience . To be able to learn from others in my same profession is what I enjoy the most!!