What are your beliefs about how people learn best?
My beliefs about how people learn best tend to change with the learner. For most people who tend to be born through the 60's, 70's and early 80's; we tend to fall into a different category than people born in the late 80's and 90's and even in the year 2000. In the early category we were taught that the teacher knows everything, we sit in our seat, study, read, and learn by receiving information. Students nowadays, do not necessarily learn this way. Most of our students in elementary, middle and high school tend to do what we would call "backwards learning". Whereas, I for example, would learn "to do" our later students do "to learn". An example would be a coworker and I have the same job, but different levels in the school system. I was born in 1963 and she was born in 1985 or 1986, we both have a Masters Degree and are Instructional Technology Coaches. If my director asks me to learn something, I will read about it, search for it on the internet, and of course google or youtube it; I will then, with my new found information, go and play or learn what I need to learn (providing it is technology). But, my co-worker, she just is asked the same, she goes directly to the program or technology and plays with it until she figures it out. Our students today are so engulfed in technology and learning whether it be at school, learning a new game system, figuring out how to work MySpace, Facebook, or other items; that learning by doing comes second nature to them. So in essence to the question, what my beliefs are about learning, my belief falls with Stephen Downes through Seimens paper (2008, January 27), his view of connectivism fit perfectly with this type of learning as he states that knowledge is distributed across many networks and that the actual act of learning is forming network connections and recognizing patterns.
What is the purpose of learning theory in educational technology?
The purpose of learning theory in educational technology is to gauge what type of learner you/ your students are. By knowing what type of learners are, we can increase their learning by the way we teach and present material. I found a website that helps to determine your learning style, check it out! Click here
Siemens, G. (2008, January 27). Learning and knowing in networks: Changing roles for educators and designers. Paper presented to ITFORUM. Retrieved from http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/Paper105/Siemens.pdf
My beliefs about how people learn best tend to change with the learner. For most people who tend to be born through the 60's, 70's and early 80's; we tend to fall into a different category than people born in the late 80's and 90's and even in the year 2000. In the early category we were taught that the teacher knows everything, we sit in our seat, study, read, and learn by receiving information. Students nowadays, do not necessarily learn this way. Most of our students in elementary, middle and high school tend to do what we would call "backwards learning". Whereas, I for example, would learn "to do" our later students do "to learn". An example would be a coworker and I have the same job, but different levels in the school system. I was born in 1963 and she was born in 1985 or 1986, we both have a Masters Degree and are Instructional Technology Coaches. If my director asks me to learn something, I will read about it, search for it on the internet, and of course google or youtube it; I will then, with my new found information, go and play or learn what I need to learn (providing it is technology). But, my co-worker, she just is asked the same, she goes directly to the program or technology and plays with it until she figures it out. Our students today are so engulfed in technology and learning whether it be at school, learning a new game system, figuring out how to work MySpace, Facebook, or other items; that learning by doing comes second nature to them. So in essence to the question, what my beliefs are about learning, my belief falls with Stephen Downes through Seimens paper (2008, January 27), his view of connectivism fit perfectly with this type of learning as he states that knowledge is distributed across many networks and that the actual act of learning is forming network connections and recognizing patterns.
What is the purpose of learning theory in educational technology?
The purpose of learning theory in educational technology is to gauge what type of learner you/ your students are. By knowing what type of learners are, we can increase their learning by the way we teach and present material. I found a website that helps to determine your learning style, check it out! Click here
Siemens, G. (2008, January 27). Learning and knowing in networks: Changing roles for educators and designers. Paper presented to ITFORUM. Retrieved from http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/Paper105/Siemens.pdf
Kimberly,
ReplyDeleteYou seem to have hit the nail on the head. People learn best when they have their styles of learning and types of intelligence addressed in the learning environment. How much influence do you think these factors have on a teacher when preparing a lesson for presentation? Do you think the personal learning style and intelligences of the teacher have anything to do with the way the lesson is prepared and/or presented?
Hi John,
ReplyDeleteMost definitely!!! I believe most teachers teach the way they learn. In our district, we are desperately trying to change this. In order for us to be effective educators, we have to change, we need to connect with our students and the technology that is available to us.
Hi Kimberly,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your description of how we were taught twenty or more years ago; however, I also remember learning a lot on my own, outside of school, by manipulating objects, exploring, making errors, etc. I use to love arts and crafts, legos, science kits, and eventually computer programming on the old Commodore 64. I learned a lot from these projects that were not taught to me by anyone. I figured out how to build the strongest house with my legos through trial and error, how to create paper dolls and paper clothes without any assistance, what happens when certain chemicals are mixed together, and how to write BASIC programs beyond what I had been taught in the classroom. So, even though the teachers that have been out of high school the longest remember traditional lectures, they may need to be reminded of the lessons they learned without lectures. They need to remember what lessons were learnt through trial and error or by making mistakes, when accepting a new style of teaching.