Week 3
In our opening discussion this week Kim pointed out that this is an exciting time to be studying learning theory as it is in a state of transition due to the expediency at which one is able to access information and to communicate that information to others via web 2.0 technologies. Examples of these technologies are wiki's, blogs and moodle (http://moodle.org/), a free open source case management system.
The learning theory that is attempting to answer questions associated with this shift is connectivism, a "learning theory for the digital age" proposed in 2004 by George Siemens. Siemens views learning as the process of creating connections and developing a network. In this new era of "tribal wisdom" or social networking the learner needs to be able to navigate through a lot of information and to monitor their own cognition (meta-cognition).
Kim's ITEC 830 class summarized this theory in a blog and George Siemens (or someone claiming to be him) replied to her blog.
Our class will experience Connectivism through the implementation of our own blog and wiki. Each group will take turns posting blogs which will be a synopsis of what was covered in a given week. They will also post ten questions with answers from each lecture on a wiki and everyone will be invited to participate in editing and answering questions.
Kim gave an example of MIT students. Through wiki's they generated questions for tests and edited each other's content. As a result of the interaction of a wiki students learned more.
In reference to connectivism and interactive learning we discussed episodic learning and digital storytelling as powerful learning methods. Digital storytelling is popular amongst K-12 educators. KQED is training teachers in digital storytelling with workshops. One of our classmates participated in a workshop. We will spend one class working on digital storytelling.
This week we also did an overview of three learning theories ; behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism.
We discussed Behaviorism in relationship to the curriculum taught at Stephen's College, the oldest women's college in the mid-west (Mt Holyoke in MA being the oldest in the country). Academics went out to communities and mirrored their curriculum to reflect what women did (housework). This curriculum an example of a behaviorist approach to learning as the skills learned were rote and specific.
As an example of the stimulus/response aspect of the Behaviorist model we learned to say hello in Korean ("An Young Ha Se Yo!").
Behaviorism is still a dominant teaching method as it is cost effective and easy to quantify. Programs such as "No Child Left Behind" require teachers to quantify skills met. Job training programs funded by the government also require ways of tracking skills met.
John Dewey was at the forefront of constructivism in Chicago in the late 1920s. It
was called the Progressive Movement at the time. He founded schools which taught tangible interactive skills like weaving and shearing. They were forced to shut down due to majority of behaviorists and parents who failed to see the relationship between learning and doing. Montessori and Summer Hills schools were a part of this hands-on curriculum approach for early childhood development.
We also reviewed cognitive theory of the 50s and 60s. The mind was seen much
like a computer with input and output, the mind as a processor in-between. The mind was not viewed as a clean slate as in the Behaviorist model. Noam Chomsky, who challenged behaviorist's perspective and sparked cognitive theory, said learners' have an innate map structured in their brain to learn.
We looked at a PPT presentation of the three theories.
We finished off our lovely night with a group lesson plan activity where we created a one day tour of San Francisco for 10 Japanese professors who speak little English. We created learning objective and explained which learning theory was used for each part of the plan.
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