Week 15--Vygotsky: The Social Formation of Mind

May 9, 2006

Engagement is motivation
Vygotsky—social/cultural linked
Aptitude attitude motivation
Video-vygotsky developmemtal style
4 ideas:
Children construct knowledge
—w/ interact w/physical objects—constructed w/ another person
Learning can lead development
--diff than piaget—mus master language to master logic, argued
--Zone of proximal development---level of assisted performance vs. independent development IS the zone of proximal development
---form educators, what
---unassisted evaluation alone does not give accurate assessment of child (one can go further than others w. assistance
--always teach to upper end of learning—what can be learned w. assistance
---importance of instructor intervention…higher levels of symbolic play

Development not separate from its context
--diff culture development different way s of structuring logic
Language central role to mental development
--info passed generation to generation by language….language is medium …exterior and interior prompts
Groups:
What is vygotsky’s theory—how do you implement in instructional design.

Rwanda—children gathered in circle, while someone tried to line up—culturally the circle is significant, entrenched, did not grasp ‘line-up’

Karen’s iMovie about friend in NY
Humanmetrics.com for personality assessment
We all think differently, learn differently. Behaviorist thought they could reduce all learning to behaviorism, not complete theory.

Kolb’s learning styles
Sensing/feeling at one end(top), thinking on the other(bottom)—‘transformation’ is crossroads---perception n/s MERDIAN
Watching/reflecting on one side(right), doing/action on other end(left)
Imagination/diverges between feeling and reflecting
N
Theory builder/scientist/abstract thinker between reflect and thinking
Engineer between doing and thinking
Artist between doing and feeling
Idea, plan, activity, present
Engage, rules, instruction, application as teachers to cover all learning styles…
70% in upper zone, 30% in lower






Final presentations
Klendalyn “Motivation

Take out sheet fold into 4 sheets:
“A” “R” “C” “S”
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~kemana/motivation/home_mot_page.html
Check out her site—lots of good motivation resources.

Leo RSS for Education
http://techleo.com/
Real simple syndication
Content comes to you
What is good, what it does, how it comes to you
XML or RSS means site has RSS feed
How to create your own---U of MISS has site to train you how...

Del.icio.us social bookmarking site

Final Presentations next week!
Areej will be presenting our collaborative final project on Wikis and Blogs in Education--I will be at my daughter's choir concert.
It has been a great term---see all of you later.
PS: I'm having a party June 17th--will follow with email.

Blog ON!
Desmond Rutherford
desmond_rutherford@yahoo.com

Week 14: Motivation & Self-Regulation in Learning

May 2, 2006

Dr. Foreman began by asking us what do we know about Korea.
Knowledge is a resource in learning. What do we know?

It is geographically south of China.
"The single shard”—children’s book from Korea. (Leo recently read)
Korean BBQ!--Karen
Korean language is a phonetic language--Brian.

Isolated for 5000 years.
Why Korea?
Reason: Dr. Foreman: I am Korean. You are interested because here I am –are you motivatd to learn about Korea?

How do teachers motivate learners? Extrinsic? Money? Internal motivational?
Master’s degree changes sense of self—Karen
MA—extrinsic & intrinsic
Barry : equate educaton w/ advantage/opportunity

Good instruction uses extrinsic motivators to stimulate instrinsic motivation in student.

Dr. Foreman passed out Hand out of Korea: 5 thousand years in 5 paragraphs!!

Japan took over Korea of 36 years---Korean language outlawed.

We broke into groups and created a visual diagram of 3,000 years of Korean history.
Koreans came to SF established busineeses, like rice manufacturing near Fresno & earned money to help fellow Korean back home.

No anchor, info doesn’t stick—no schema for dynasty names (for instance)--—we built schemas with our graphic representations, so even taking away our “poster” we can still tell the story of Korean. Leo was able to retell story because of the pre-constructed schema. Dr. Foreman says that after this exercise, having constructed our own schemas to handle the subject matter, we can tell a story of Korean history that some Koreas cannot! Interesting. I know that in my travels in Europe, I met many Europeans who knew more about American History that I did!

Motivation Theories
• Extrinsic versus intrinsic
o External and tangible
• Keller’s ARCS model

John Keller—instructional design model—Florida State U

Attention---(Once again--gain attention to capture those learners!)
Relevance--- personal goals and needs, familiarity (bring this to bear, instructional designers!)
Confidence- help feel successful, control success, expectations, mastery (teachers can heavily influence the success of a learner by the interaction in the classroom situation---IDers can do this too w/ creativity and sensitivity)
Satisfaction,--(This can be a challenge, how do we invoke and sustain satisfaction in a learning enviornment?)

John Keller: “strategies for stimulating”


Motivation: Group Differences:
Traditionalists
Baby-boomers
Generation Xers
Millennial

Practical Motivators
Teaching behavior (content is sometimes peripheral---sometimes we are motivated by the instructor, therefore the subject)

Enthusiasm
Voice, gesture, movement, facial expressions
Eye contact

Clarity—speech, presentation, outline, major points. Esxamples

Interaction: praise, student;s by name-address, methods of instruction, course assignments, sllabus, 1st impressions, course goals/objectives

Amy Carr:
We visit web site----game to satisfy ARCS…each group described way to facilitate theory.

Chapter 11—Read—no written homework!!!
Next week we may see the first couple of final presentations...Klendalyn's? Leo's? Others'? For all: Good luck on your final projects!

Blogfully yours!
Desmond Rutherford
desmondr@sfsu.edu

Week 13--Situated Cognition

Thank you Barry for doing this week's blog since I was out ill!!

ITEC 800 04/25/06
Internship @ Genetic instructional design w/ high technical writing skills during the
summer
Friday - May 5, 2006 5-8 PM | ITEC Open House
Invite friends, family
Apple, Genetic
Final project, DST
Recall of last week discussion
Piaget –(Constructivism) knowledge is constructed
Accommodation – learning new skills; change in lifestyle; Mother comes to visit you give
her your bed
vs
assimilation = old schema anchored to new schema
equilabration > equalize: adjusted to the environment
Behavioralism | learning principle | focus on behavior
Stimulus > response > reinforcement
Feedback, extra credit, recognition, money, acknowledgement
Cognittive learning principle | focus on process
Input>process>output
Constructivism | Piaget Active; Interaction, Problem solving, w/environment
How do you become an expert
Situated cognition | happens in a community | external
Cognitive Theory | what’s in the mind | internal
Hands on rather than read @ it
Be a scientist; apprenticeship;
Ex: students in 800 are learning new professional jargon; after a year you are more
familiar w/ new environment
Group brainstorm
What did you learn today?
Where did you learn it at?
Pg. #168 | Driscoll’s article
Peripheral –learning @ the community
Inbound - just becoming a part of the community–
Insider- part of the community
,boundary-

Week 12: Cognitive and Knowledge Development

Started with a overview of what we have covered so far on this itec800 journey as an introduction to Piaget.

---Speakers from last Monday---Jay Cross, , Bonk, and Reiser, all constructivists—problems are not always instructional problem. First, perceive the problem. Move on to best solution, even if it is not a training issue.

Behaviorism
Cognitive Theory—umbrella for many (gesalt—perceived
Constructivist

The learning theory reflects the lens of how we see what we see…

Are we paying attention to behavior or our development of thinking process—logical development—Piaget looks at all 3. Some throw out Behaviorism to look at Cognitivism, same with cognitive versus constructivist…however, we need to incorporate what is needed for what situation.
Piaget observed his own child…..came up with 4 stages of cognitive development:

Sensorimotor (birth to 1 year)..pre-symbol, preverbal, explore the world by putting it in your mouth.
Preoperational (2 to 8 years) partial logic, tall thin glass perceived as having more than short wide glass.
Concrete operational (8-14) conservation, reversibility, seriation, classification
Formal Operations (over 14)—can perceive multiple possibilities, deduce, exclude…abstract thinking,

Piaget’s ideas suffered criticism due to generalizations---critics would see anomaly, throw out idea…erroneously.
Classical thinking, not all fit in to categories….
Critique: did not look at individual differences
Montessori, modeled from Piaget…
Process )assimilation/accommodation) schema—sucking infant—part of experiencing world, learning about environment…
Schema (Airport) Been to one…easy to navigate in any other city.

Assimilate or accommodate? Schema is pattern assimilate—accommodate it more radical adjustment to environment.

Epistemology—how do we know
Broke into groups to evaluate 4 main cognitive development levels
Sensorimotor—(4 stages)
Preoperational--
Concrete Operations—conservation, reversibility, seriation, classification
Formal Operations—abstract thinking,

Final Projects:
Take our emerging technology topic, apply the theories we have learned in this semester, identify. How is it implemented….Present a 10-minute PowerPoint version of what might be a 40-minute presentation.

Movie---neonates…grasping, sucking…follow moving object…taste and hearing present a birth---3 weeks distinguish mother by sounds of voice and looks…then on to early cognition…piaget….consider ‘the theory’ of cognitive development..innate inborn abilities to learn about world,,exp world, build on it …think differently than adults…interaction with environment, active discovery….inner drive to organize and learn by past experiences…unit of itellegent behavioir is schems---mental respresentations (thinking….

Assimilation..taking in things from environment
Account for different situation…accommodation…change behavior to accommodate new element in world
Equilibraton provides stimulant to learn more about the world…
The invariation
Object permanence …general symbolic function….18 to 24 mos..
Preoperation…egocentric
Animism
Mamamedia.com (?) look at thia –what are they learning…what stage are they at??

Seymour papert?
Nextweek: Situated Cognitions

Blogfully yours,
Desmond Rutherford

Week 10 ISAN Guest speakers discuss instructional technology

We all got to meet and eat and listen to current trends in instructional technology, thanks to our guest speakers Jay Cross, Dr. Curtis J. Bonk, and Dr. Robert Reiser. While Jay Cross is revered in his field, he seemed to meander and lack dynamic speaking ability. For those of us in the munchies auditorium, only about one third of his words were audible, so we focused on the cheese and crackers. I know I am not alone in feeling that those of us in the web-cast room did not get the same quality of experience and those who were crammed in with the “No. 30 Stockton Bus” feeling of intimacy in the live room.

Hands down, Curtis Bonk was the most captivating presenter (with or without the Borg mask!) Many of the topics that he touched upon were quite exciting, i.e., the physics professor who did morning online assessments to guide the content of his afternoon lectures and stated JITT (Just in time teaching). I would have liked a more thorough covering of these topics, bit I was excited about the talk, just the same.

Robert Reiser’s talk on problem-solving the issues of employee motivation and productivity was inspiring and interesting. The Century 21 example where senior sellers would share their expertise with novice sellers was a creative solution that inspired collaborative learning was refreshing to hear especially because it involved people would normally compete against each other.

Overall, we all left feeling that we learned something and that we have made a good decision to study Instructional Technology. I hope that ISAN can provide such forums on a more regular basis.

Desmond Rutherford

Week 9--Gagne's Model of Instruction

Itec800 blog
March 28, 2006

Next class will be at 5pm on Monday:
Monday, April 10, 2006
5:00 – 7:00 PM
BH 168

Bring questions (Post on Forum) about e-learning, blended learning, m-learning
No homework---take notes—enter into forum
E-learning, Blended-learning, M-learning, Informal learning, ilearn, whatever you want to call, we want to discuss about changes in learning modes. Dr. Robert Reiser from Florida State, Dr. Curtis Bonk Indiana University and Jay Cross (E-learning)will be speaking.

After our mini, 10-min teach, group guesses what outcomes are, as teachers, we reveal---(we didn’t really do this…)
Our instruction should be done with outcomes (objectives) in mind.

Karen:
“Gagne goes Green”
Flower, fruit, veggies—create vase.
Pear stuffed with flowers, apples, peppers. We all created vases from fruit and stuffed flowers—beautiful.


Glendalyn
Obesity & Relates to disease, death (attention gettter)
“5 Healthful eating changes”
Self-assessment—then 5 volunteers read solutions to reach objectives/descriptions.
Passed out the explanantions to all after exercise.
Grain demo: passed around bags
“Look for Whole grains” not ‘multi-grains’ for best health benefit.
Asked us to fill out form---2 goals, what we learn, etc.
Pass around bag of vanilla granola—yay! We like demos we can eat.


Carmen
Internal computer components
Understanding them—why it matters—
Physical examples—mother boards, cpu’s, ram,
Specs: cpu (1.87 Giga hertz)
RAM explained w/ desk metaphor—Very good! More RAM (measured in MB), more piles of paper to work on,,….
Short quiz—


Barry
Attention getter: Bass singing “Take me to the River”—Al Green would be proud!
Crappie fishing rods—bamboo garden sticks to make rods. Explanation of keeping the bait in motion and hands on making our own rods—I’m ready to fish!

Brian
Gagne likes music (attention getter)
How to avoid paying 20 bucks for a CD when you only like 1or 2 cuts…use iTunes to buy music by the song or a whole release for $9.99—we love iTunes.

Desmond
Cootie Catchers—break from the mundane, make critical decisions with your new cootie catcher. Demo & step by step process for folding the CCs—plus live interaction of using the cootie catcher—it turns out that Dr. Foreman is going to be a millionaire.

Terrence
“Shoe/ through, done, gone, this , that, passed. Facetious”
Phonemes…phoneme chart for every sound in English.
Explored how every sound in English is linked to phoneme chart.

Anthony
Explored what makes good photograph.
Composition of thirds, with just a hint of personal aesthetics.

Peter
Started speaking German---how to count to 10
Taught us to count: (2nd vowel dicates sound)
Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn
We’re off to Berlin for a pilsner.

Darren
English learners’ lesson—We are all 7th and 8th graders…
“determined”—how to say it, what it means, multiple uses—effective!





Leo

Paper airplanes
Think about flight, make airplanes

Next week—upload lesson plan……see everybody on Monday April 10th, 5pm in 168 Burke Hall. Ciao!

Desmond Rutherford

Weeks 7 & 8 Digital Story Telling, NetGen and Gagne

Today we meet again after our day long Digital Storytelling Workshop on Saturday.
After some technical difficulties, we watched the DST videos…

Glendalyn:
“Cherished”
About her pregnancy and birth of her children-—growth of infant to young child..learning purpose thru children…(done in pinnacle…quality of medium under par, but the story was very good.)

Carmen—"Xu Xu"
This was about having puppy in her life and what she learned:
playfulness, love,—love of animals. All voice-over--No music til end—very effective, I thought--well done.

Leo —
"Tapir"
Leo takes a trip to Costa Rica and encounters macaws spider monkeys wild pigs...Santana as sound track with soun wonderful wild animal noises as well. Climax is finally coming face to face with the wild Tapir--a 7ft hog/aardvark creature--handsome indeed!

Peter-
"Graduation trip"
After an upsetting graduation, he takes a trip with father and sister to Switzerland. I was about dealing with the anger and appreciating family and how he reconciled his feeling among relatives in a small town. Knowing how the story was in first draft and comparing to final version, this piece really developed.

Anthony
"Back to school"
This was done in video format and Anthony compares school here at SFSU with his home country, the Philippines. He did his DST on the DST workshop experience, so we all got to see our handsome muggs on the big screen...I was glad that Anthony did this; he created a record of a memorable day--way to go!

Desmond
"I Have Arrived"
My piece was about taking a trip to Scotland to visit my folks, searching in different places and learning the simplicity of being attached to my parents...and understanding my connection to them.

Areej
"Having a Choice"
This was about Areej comparing her life to her peers—they got married, had kids, appeared happy, but she followed her dreams as her father sagely advised her to do. Now she is reaching for high goals because she has a choice...very good.

Terrence-
"There are a thousand joys to let out life…”
A look at dealing with his Father's death. He reminisces about his father’s life and deals with the pain of watching a loved one die. This was a very moving piece. Terrence looks at the silent communication of his mother and father facing death...a moving tribute.

***While more technical issues were resolved we viewed Dr. Foreman's slide show of Tokyo, Seoul and Kyoto. We also got to see her home in Korea and her father’s grave mound, who had just passed recently...

Brian
"Eating, a world away"
Brian takes a return trip to Malaysia as an adult and explores the epicurean delight of eating...many delicious-looking dishes, but all I wanted was the frog porridge!

Barry
"Gigging in Kawai"
Barry goes to Hawaii to play music for the summer w/ his uncle. He find companionship and forms a trio playing all over Kawai and jams with lots of musicians, including Billy Preston...after a summer of cool gigs, he lands back in California and happily returns to his 5th grade class.

Darren-
"Driving 55"
This piece explores the Zen of driving 55 and staying relaxed while the world rages around him (nice road rage shots, Darren!) He is saving gas, saving money and saving his sanity!

Karen was out sick--we look forward to her video next week.

_______

We discussed Constructivist approach to learning in light of our DST workshop experience. In the process, we create our own meaning—construct, hands on—create own meaning because personal…from there, we learn the technology…
Cooperative learning. Community of learners.
We did a round robin commenting on what was best part of the DST day:
(Following is a montage of everyones's comments...)
Learning everyone’s stories---end result was a surprize
Fascinated w/ group, all individuals—help each other...Nature of community building...Satisfying to complete project...Vision realized...Learning to condense...Something we deal with—release by telling the story...I'm going to make a christmas presents of iMovies...Like working w/ people—getting help from others...Chance to look back, reflect...Like the combination of group interaction and solitary work...Realizing how nice commute is...an ideal to aspire to.
____________

Net-Gen learning style vs Gagne’s theories….
Audience analysis….education does not always take into account like business will do market research. Despite grumblings from older generations, the NetG are interested in learning—just need to learn how to engage with them.
>>>We need to change, not the next generation.
Barry mentioned his nephew and daughter..teenager, how they multi-focus, on phone, television, computer, etc and he just learned to download an attachment.
Dr. Foreman used an immigrant analogy: older gen vs the younger gen--we need to learn the habits of this new land of NetG people--when in Rome!
Net gen used to finding out info on own—they need guidance more than rigid teaching..

We had a discussion regarding the use of Lynda.com. I haven't used it yet...now after the varied discussion I have bookmarked it and will explore...
Some only use when stuck, some learn by it faithfully. The discussion reflects how differently we all learn and each have our own needs for learning.

Someone mentioned the value of telling another what you know to reinforce—or teach someone...

Net gen not getting validation or feedback, which they are accustomed to, now that they are in corporate world...it has created a problem.
___________

3 dominant theories:
Behaviorism—1920-60
Cognitivism-1960-90
Constructivism, 1990-present

Gagne—focus on instruction, not learning
Looks at learning theories as (...?)
Famous for his Taxonomy: Ok, who can recall them w/o looking? (Hint: VICAM)
* verbal information
* intellectual skills
* cognitive strategies
* attitudes
* motor skills

Gagne: Godfather of instr technology, 1st to set up instr tech as field—(FLA state)
Tribal effect of DR and students----diff school of thoughts...closed circles.
His ideas are more behavioral and cognitive, not constructivist, Teacher-centric
Mastery-learning—hierarchy for mastery...Also, teacher decides steps of learning----

Use of Cognitive ideas:
How do you help?—What strategy to help encode and retrieve learning object?
Teacher can relate something familiar—mnemonics.. Tips to learn, etc.
Teacher—organizes info—use visual, connect new w/ prior knowledge + compare/contrast

Construct-
Teacher as coach, not center of learning experience

Experiential learning
Behave, cogn and contr…

Gagne: was behaviorist, became cognitive
Bloom vs. Gagne:
Bloom 1955
Recall and recognition
Comprehension
Analysis
Synthesis
Evaluation

Gagne—VICAM 1965
Must know 9 event of instruction!!!!
1 gaining attention
2 inform learners of objective
3 stimulating recall of prior learning
4 presenting the stimulus
5 providing learning guidance
6 eliciting performance
7 providing feedback
8 assessing performance
9 enhancing retention and transfer

Remember by grouping in chunks
1-3 intro—preparing of learning
4-7 learning event—acquisition and performance
8-9 post learning…--transfer of learning

For next week: Lesson Plan of simple instruction (USE GAGNE)
Teach the class something
Use as many Outcomes as possible
Use all 9 events !!!

Merrill 1987:
find, use, know (performance level)
Fact, concept, procedure, principle (outcomes)
Merrill was student of Gagne, he incorporated both Bloom and Gagne into his theories. Now Merrill ides used most.
Know…first level
Use…more advanced
Find---discovery—highest level

Next Week: turn in midterm quiz, on Gagne.

As always, please comment on this Blog.
Thanks! Desmond Rutherford

Greetings from Japan

I checked the itec 800 ilearn site last night and notice that some of you already watched Oblinger's presentation and made your comments. I appreciate that. Here is some pictures I promised. The faculty workshop workshop went really well, I am just so amazed how professors are so professional and responsible. I will write about it after today's seminar. For now, here is my travel log:

http://comeandseerwanda.blogspot.com/

Week 5--Cognitive Theory: Information Processing

Briefly, about Week 4: Behaviorism. Last week was an online forum class in which we reacted to/summarized either chapter 2 or chapter 6 of the textbook and posed one or more questions for our peers to respond to. Everyone made strong initial contributions and to the posed questions. The forum illustrates the multiple shades of interpretation that comes out of behaviorism: we all have our own view of the benefits and short-comings of Behaviorism. Important to remember is that Behaviorism has its strengths and usefulness in the right environment, and it can be supplemented by other theories as we learn more. I think we all agree how useful it is to our understanding of human behavior and learning.

OK, week 5.
Today we were graced with the presence of Athena Nazario, our friendly SFSU librarian, who delivered an informative presentation on conducting research. The PPT presentation is in iLearn under week 5. If you still have questions or problems you can email Athena at:

anazario@sfsu.edu

I won't cover the presentation much, since you can view the PPT, but there was a couple of interesting elements related to Google : the good, the bad and the ugly. Athenia used The Yes Men site to illustrate how web information can e deceptive. If you go to: http://www.gatt.org

and compare to: http://wto.org , the 'real WTO' site, you can see that they are nearly indistinguishable. The Yes Men apparently posed as WTO businessmen to lure outside parties, with success apparently. Interesting. The other example used was typing "Martin Luther King" into Google for results....one hit is www.martinlutherking.org which comes up as the third result. This is a frighteningly racist site that claims "true historic facts," which painfully underlines the reality that ANYTHING can be found on the internet without regard to accountability. There is scholar.google.com which is still in Beta, and the intent is for more scholarly articles, etc--but I'm not sure that it is imperious to bogus research hits...

http://democracynow.org was also a recommended site

Library search:

link+ shared catlog--regional

iliad –national search form (found under document delivery in library web Page)

---all freee services

Databases:

For education:

ERIC

Academic search elite (recommended*)

Education full text

Other:

PsycInfo (mind and tech)

Applied Science & Technology abstracts

Communications and Mass Media Complete (influence of media on humans)

Use of ‘AND’ between words on google search is implied by google

To limit search use OR, NOT –use caps

If unsure, use part word—like 'construct' will hit 'construct', 'construction', 'constructivist', etc. uses all variations of that word

Break into concepts for search (concept AND concept OR subject).

Use subject words or descriptors to limit search

Click scholarly, refereed or peer review…to limit to popular articles

Use subject terms to get more search hits if hits are limited

If you retrieve a siting, but no article go to : elec journal list, or catalog

We all logged on to begin our searches….Athena came around to answer questions, etc.

_______

Dr. Foreman brought up the Net generation—folks born after 1982. Computers are connected to them—multi-taks—always connected.
More motivated? Dr. Foreman suggested that the Net Gen are more hungry for stimuli, knowledge, more motivated.

Training needs to change to accommodate Net Gen.

Edutopia—why did I write this? For next week, read Chapter 4 and listen to lecture link under Assignment for week 6 ---respond in forum.

Constructivism—digital story telling march18. This will be exciting! BRING:

Story: 200 words, music, photos/images. We will work together to polish our writing—read, use iMovie for our digital story telling. Story is about whatever we wish, maybe something that changed us, transformation..important event. We watched Dr. Foreman's DST project; a poem about coming to a decision about travelling to Rwanda to comfort the children and people who survived the genocide--very moving piece.

We also watched a Behavior video—a student from last semester(?) final project. I don't think I was alone in feeling a bit awed by the level of production involved in this video, however, I found some of the film imagery distracting to the theme. I kept trying to associate what I was hearing with what I was seeing, and, at times, it was a bit much. Nonetheless, the theory of Behaviorism was distilled in a way that most of us seemed to grasp and find meaningful. By the way, Anthony volunteered to make a copy for anyone interested--I think we just need to pass along a DVDR? Money, too? See Anthony for details!

Carmen brought up a question about positive feedback/reinforcement. Where is feedback, reinforcer w/ 15 yr old fat kid, her nephew, who creates a false profile and pretends to be 22, virile, handsome, etc and 'snares' girls on the web. Some thought it was strange, but others seemed to applaud the creativity...successful results--what is reinforced? Every individual needs different reinforcers...Are reinforcers less valid? Equal?

_______

Cognitive Theory-

Encode, retrieve,

Sensory—attention

Short term memory—limited space

Lost w/o rehearsal or encoding strategy

Wee exercise: we all get to peer into box containing 20 items, we get 45 seconds to mentally log the items, then back to seats to write down as many as we can remember. I got:

Comb, Fork, Screw driver, Hair clip, Battery, Sugar, Non-sugar, Eraser, Cream-face bottle, Aspirin, Roll of clear tape, Post-it pad, Pen, Prism, Tangerine

Did Not get: Lipstick, Clip-binder, Candle, Cassette tape, Mustard

Dr. foreman:

Use a structure:
Group by origin, color, office supply, shape

Harder if no schema (ie office supply, food items, etc)

Terence(aka Mr. Memory)—recalled all 20!

Multi-media is good to reinforce different channels in brain—so use in creating instructional design!

Dual-code in play here

More manipulating (touching, some people verbalized items), more encoding..

We all are actively processing

Compare / contrast to help learners remember

Novel object we remember-but not too novel

Forget well-known objects…

Combine cognitive and constructive (const also encorporates behavior)

DIGITAL storytelling:

Constructivist project

If story accompanied the objects—we would remember:

3 types of long term memory

Declarative

Procedural

Episodic (story—easy to remember)

Dr. Foreman will be going to Japan, and speaking at a faculty development conference. Also she is going to go to Korea to speak at Korean Society of Educatonal Technology conference.

Remember:

For next week, read Chapter 4 and listen to lecture link under Assignment for week 6 ---respond in forum.

See you all on the 18th--bring 100-200 word story, 15-20 digital photos, music file, creativity and a dish to pass.

Desmond Rutherford

Week 3--Introduction to Learning Theories

photo courtesy of www.toddadams.net

The clever ones have already noted that Week Two’s Blog is absent. I hope to remedy this once Brian has posted the podcast from February 7, and I can listen and blog from there. Thanks for your patience, all.

We discussed the benefits of the iLearn forum. Dr. Foreman pointed out that with the general feeling of impenetrability of the first chapter of our textbook, for instance, we could see that we are not alone if we are exchanging ideas in the forum. This was, of course, foreshadow to next week’s forum assignment to replace a normal class meeting. We are going to read chapters 2 and 6 in Learning and Instruction: Theory into Practice, 5th Edition by Margaret E. Gredler and write 250 to 500 words in reflection/response to one of the chapters and pose a question as well. The deadline posting the response and question is 7pm Tuesday, February 21. But it doesn’t end there: please respond to other students’ postings. Dr. Foreman said that the person receiving the greatest number of responses will glean the most points!

Dr. Foreman also experimented with SnapZ Pro, a Mac-only platform webcast tool (if that is the correct term) that captured her projected web and PowerPoint presentation as well as an audio track. It is not high end , though inexpensive, and it is memory hungry. Her approximate 10minute presentation ate about 10MB. Compare to Brian’s podcast files which are 14 or 15 MB for about 90 minutes. Brian is going to look at the possibility of using an iMac eye-mac (?) for recording the video portion of our wonderfully photogenic class.

We went through Dr. Foreman’s PPT presentation of the course overview, which is available for view at the ITEC800 page on iLearn. She described our subject matter focus up to this point in terms of camera shots, with everything preceding Week 3 as “long-shots.” With this presentation, we slightly tightened the focus to a more medium shot. We will move forward and take on a more tightly-focused view of the learning theories, starting with Behaviorism and the slideshow posted on iLearn. Dr. Foreman recommends that we start there (Behaviorism slideshow) before we tackle the reading so that the ideas will be easier to understand when we are reading. I know that I am not alone in hoping that the ideas in subsequent chapters flow more easily than the mental cement of chapter one!

Discussions continued on the evolution of learning theories and how each of the three (Behavior, Cognitive, Constructivist) have their place for different learning environments and that each new theory was built upon its predecessor and tended to answer questions that could not be answered by the previous, prevailing theory. For instance: Behaviorism can’t address the working of the mind, so the Cognitive theory evolved. The Cognitive theory addresses the organization of the mind (with the not always popular analogy of the mind is like a computer), but can’t really address how we can become emotionally motivated to learn, hence the evolution of the Constructivist theory. As our ITEC800 learning camera focuses, we will see more schools of thought that fall under the umbrella of the 3 big theories.

We noted that most grammar schools incorporate the Behavioral model for instruction. Brian related that learning algebra in high school is difficult and frustrating because there is no real-life explanation for what is being solved. However, years, later, solving a problem on the job, it dawned on him how to do the math. This illustrates that the idea of measurable learning, currently adopted by public school for funding, etc. is not a true gage of whether learning has occurred.

OK, Dales’ Cone of Experience illustrates the retention rate associated with the method of learning, with reading bottoming at 10% retention and what we experience or teach to others comes in at a 90% retention rate. The graphic segued nicely to the group exercise which followed. We broke into four groups of three and brain-stormed to design a day of instruction to a group of adult Korean tourists who have a working knowledge of English and it is their first visit to the US. We were assigned to teach them something about San Francisco using one or all learning theories.

Please let me know if I got the names right for each group. (It’s a good thing with have mug shots on our profiles!) Also, I am having trouble reading my own writing, so I apologize if I botch anything—from now on I am using my laptop to record notes.

Group 1 (Carmen, Anthony, Areej)
Adults can travel, information is power (?). We give them a map with pictures and create an agenda. Incorporate Constructivist theory: demonstrations with a guide, go to Golden Gate Bridge. Problem solve: Agenda with map of where to go, what to do. Provide several destinations with restaurants for them to locate without a guide.

Group 2 (Leonard, Terence, Desmond)
We are incorporating all three learning theories to teach the Korean tourists about the different neighborhoods of SF. They are given an information pack with cheat sheets for each neighborhood and a map. They board a multi-media bus where they are tested on info from their packets and get prizes that relate to different neighborhoods (behaviorism). While they get a tour of the city, images, video and music are used to inform and reinforce unique qualities of each area of city, to help them learn (cognitive). Near the end of the day, individuals go to a particular neighborhood to learn more about that area, then meet back to teach the others in their group about their discoveries (constructivist).

Group 3 (Darren, Peter, Klendalyn)
Constructivist only approach. Have a scavenger hunt in top 10 sites of SF. Take pictures of what they see, make journal entries, and connect to their own experiences.

Group 4 (Karen, Brian, Barry)
Combine conventional learning with technology. Each tourist has an iPod with instructional video loaded. Have them use BART, relate to the Seoul Metro in Korea---frames of learning: how to use BART in 7 steps from the video in iPod. Analogy of Korean system with the BART system. Compare to own travel experiences. As group, use the iPod and solve problems together. Combines Behaviorism and Constructivism.

We did a post-mortem: each of us responding to what we felt happened in the past 3 hours…it was a good night of applying the theory to a practical application and then observing what our peers did to solve the education problem. We all did well!

Desmond Rutherford