Link to my VoiceThread

http://voicethread.com/share/2085579/


Handy little tool this VoiceThread is.  Here is what I thought was an issue that I face in my classroom, and what I think of it.

Enjoy.

Social Learning

This week, we were exposed to the idea of connectivism, and social learning.  Essentially, the basis of the theories is that we all learn by watching and interacting with others.  They could be parents, peers, family members, or even strangers.  Either way, we construct our meaning and learning through interaction.

The strategy from this weeks’ reading was that of cooperative learning.  At its heart, it is grouping or pairing of students into cooperative learning groups in which the students interact in the learning.  They help one another construct meaning, which is something they are doing already to learn social norms of their peer groups.  And not only are the students assimilating information and taking part in the classroom learning, they are also working to develop those interpersonal skills that they will need in the future.

The strategy focused this cooperative learning experience on the construction of some sort of multimedia artifact to share with the others within the class.  When the students create an online artifact, it makes the information more accessible to all of the students at their own pace.  Simply having the students create and present is bound to leave some students asking questions.  But when a learning group creates something like a web page, others in the classroom have the opportunity to browse the site and take in the information on their own, or work their way through it with a partner.  Also, this opens up the artifact for discussion.  It can foster new ideas and thinking.  

Quite simply, this instructional strategy is embracing what connectivism and social learning are based upon, students learning with other students.  When the student becomes a teacher themselves, they have more ownership of the learning that is happening in the classroom. They become reliant upon one another and it fosters an atmosphere with an emphasis on learning, including all of the students in the class. 

Constructionism

This week we were presented with the concepts of both constructivism and constructionism.  Constructivism is a theory that essentially says that every person makes their own meaning based upon their own experiences.  Constructionism is an idea that states that people learn more when they create some sort of artifact that they can share with others.  While both of these have a place in the classroom to some degree, constructionism seems to do so in a much larger way.  If a student has an opportunity to learn something by just being exposed to it, then they may learn a little about it.  But, if a student is completely immersed in a topic or task, they take away much more.  This is especially apparent in a science class room where topics can be hard to grasp and theories may be hard to grasp.  Lab formats where items are created or where learning is done in a discovery manner provide much stronger results in students.

In this week’s resources, the instructional strategy that was presented was that of generating and testing hypothesis.  Which, being a science teacher, was right up my alley.  The idea is that students are presented with questions, and to arrive at the answers, they need to work through a process.  They have to create their own hypothesis on the question from which to base a test.  Their testing process should allow them to arrive at a correct answer.  This process asks students to break down an overall problem to its smaller pieces, analyze them, ask questions, formulate tests, and analyze and explain results.    Our book offered some great ideas for structured approaches to this with math and social studies using different kinds of technology.  For example, students were given a scenario where they were given an amount of money, and a handful of options as to what to do with the money.  They had to appropriate the funds to give them their best return on the investment.  This involves the student in the decision making process, and helps them formulate reasoning as to why they chose what they did for a plan. 

This strategy seems to be a strong method for embracing constructionism.  It engages students in a process in which they create some sort of evidentiary item to back up their hypothesis. 

Cognitivism

This week I was presented with the idea of cognitivism, which at its heart, is about students experience and engagement when approaching new information.  Students need to make the connections within the information on their own to truly add it to their general fund of knowledge.  Another aspect of cognitivism is the use of shapes and images being used to form these connections.

Also, in this week’s resources, I was exposed to a few instructional strategies that make use of the idea of cognitivism.  The first of which was the use of cues, questions, and advance organizers.  This approach to introducing information forces the students to experience the information.  The teacher is leading them in the right direction in the learning with the right choice of questions and cues.  The students take those cues, and search for the right information.  If the student is actively searching for correct information, they are more apt to commit it to memory, since it is a more engaging experience.  A good example of this in action is a K-W-L chart.  Students and teachers approach a new topic by discussing the things that they already know, which helps the teacher formulate better questions that lead students in the correct directions.  It also lays a ground work for the lesson by having the students decide on what they want to know, which puts them in charge of their learning.  And it recaps things at the end with a discussion on what was learned.  Another good aspect of a table like this is that it takes advantage of the positives of using shapes and images to organize information.

Another strategy was the idea of summarization and note taking.  This, like the prior approach, forces the students to experience the information as opposed to just reading it.  If a student is asked to summarize a piece of reading in their own words, they will have to read it, decide on what was important, what to include, and how to phrase it in their own way.  That small amount of time spent on the information asks them to look at it nearly four times already.  Adding the experiential portion of writing things in their own words, the students increase their retention of it greatly.

Cognitivism appears to be the basis for much of what I was taught all throughout my college career.  Making the students work with the information as opposed to simply just reading it is solid practice.  With as many students as we have, and each with their own learning style, these approaches offer plenty of opportunity for many of them to put information into their long term memories.

Behaviorism

     Behaviorism, as I see it, is a necessary part of any classroom.  From the basic introduction of information and subjects, to overall classroom management strategies, it provides a strong foundation for much of what occurs in our rooms.  We reinforce the positive behaviors we want to see in our classes, and the behaviors we would like to diminish, we punish.

     In this week’s resources, we were presented first, with the idea of behaviorism, as well as some in class strategies.  The first of the two strategies I encountered was the idea of reinforcing effort.  The idea behind this is the rewarding of the student for the effort put forth in a project or assignment, as opposed to solely basing the grade on a right or wrong answer.  In many cases, students don’t understand that their hard work is worth something.  They have seen over years that the right answer is what pays off, and many tend to shut down when they get the feeling that, despite their effort, they cannot get that right answer.  So why try?

     This method of rewarding student’s effort follows along strongly with the idea of operant conditioning.  Positive behaviors are being rewarded, and on the other side of the coin, not trying or showing effort receives lower grades.  Hopefully, this practice would bolster a student’s work ethic and get them to continue trying hard.

     The other strategy from this week’s reading was the use of homework and practice.  The idea here is to make sure that students have a reasonable amount of homework going home with them at night to allow them to continue their use of topics discussed and practiced in class, to show them that the mastery of most anything comes with hard work and practice. 

     Over, I assume, most all of our student careers, we all had the classes that had a large amount of drill and practice type lessons.  I know that when I learned multiplication facts, we would practice them on a daily basis.  Every day, without fail, we would do sheets of single digit multiplication.  After working on it at school, we would take some practice sheets home at night and even do flashcards with our parents.  Eventually I could rattle off our facts like it was second nature.  So I think there is still something to be said for this type of practice.  While we may hear so often that it is an outdated style of teaching, it still works for some things like math facts and vocabulary terms.

     These two strategies are positive examples of how behaviorism is still something that can be taken advantage of in a modern classroom setting.  For as long as we’ve been alive, we’ve done the things that have been rewarded, and stopped the things that aren’t.  If it’s human nature, why wouldn’t we take advantage of it?