Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Module 2 Cognitivism as a Learning Theory

As educators we have to take what we know about learning theories to help us apply it to teaching our students. Our students all learn differently one student may be a verbal learner another more hands on, we can't put them all in one category. The same with learning theories, I don't believe one learning theory is better than the other, when you combine the theories you can see how learning really works. Most people learn from using what they learned in the past and applying it to new knowledge. Knowing how our students learn will help us diversfy our lessons. We have to step out of our comfort zone and teach differently. I am more of a verbal learner, I like to listen to the teacher talk about the subject. I've learned as a special ed teacher that a lot of my students are more hands-on, so I had to learn to make sure that I put a lot of experiments or projects into my lesson plans for my students to fully understand the concepts that I'm trying to teach. Motivation also plays a major role in education, some students are motivated to make good grades because of the awards and praise they recieve. Others are curious and want to as much knowledge as they can obtain. But what about the students who do not do well in the classroom what motivates them? It's our duty as educators to find that motivation to help that student succeed in school.

http://lumpe.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/emerging-technologies-for-learning/

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/01/crash_course_in.html

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

EDUC 7105 Module 1 "Metaphors of Educators"

I believe that at one point in any given day an educator would fall into one of the categories, depending on the class or student. I personally like the "Educator ad Concierge". "The concierge serves to provide a form of "soff guidance"- at times incorporating traditionl lectures and, in other instances, permitting lerners to explore on their own (Siemens, 2008). As an educator you have to know when to teach your students and when you should let them explore new ideas on their own. Personally, this is a hard one for me, I sometimes want to give the students the answer instead of guiding them with a question, though I'm working on it. I also like the idea of students learning from each other as well as the educator. Students sometimes learn more from or listen to each other more than an adult, since they're using language that they easily understand.

Reference:

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