Reflection upon my personal learning theory.

When I reflect upon this course, I noticed that there are lots of technology tools that I never heard about. Normally, I label myself as tech savvy guy, and try to follow new trends in technology. This course reminded me that it is impossible to follow all technological improvements, and teachers must work together and inform each other about new technology gadgets and instruction resources. Additionally, teachers must spare some time to surf internet to find new technologies in a weekly basis.

I advise every teacher to write down their own personal learning theory. Application of an instruction strategy and using a learning theory depends on both character and ability of teacher and students in the class. In other words, there is no perfect strategy, and teachers must keep in mind that each brain has a different understanding and nerve connections (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010a). Therefore, one teacher can benefit from same learning theory while the other one cannot and one strategy can work in one class and will not work in another.

Likewise, I wrote my first personal learning theory in the beginning of EDUC 6711 course. In my learning theory, I pointed out how to motivate students, engage them to the lesson and help them to learn with activities, demonstration and project based assignments. At the end of this course, I acknowledged that my personal learning theory was good but not completed. For instance, I did not know that the brain can process maximum 7 information pieces at the same time (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010b). I am happy to see that new trend is student-centered learning, and that is what I am trying to achieve in my current lesson plans. However, I understood that sharing the product, explaining the results, and making it a public entity reinforce the learning effectively (Thurmond, 1999). Additionally, I should include social learning and connectivism into my learning theory.

I am planning to modify my personal theory of learning. Students will participate actively in presentation of the product. I will also create online groups with students from other schools and ask my students to perform online interviews. Additionally, I am going to enrich homework types, and will give an opportunity to choose a homework type that student want. Moreover, I will focus on organizing my lesson plan using both text and visual mapping, and try to limit the number of information that students need to process less than six.

This course both drew a new vision about how to use technology that I knew, and taught new technology tools. For example, I never taught that I can use spreadsheets to draw graphs of data collected in experiments. After now, I will tell my students that they can use spreadsheets while processing the experiment data. Additionally, I like concept maps (https://bubbl.us/). One of the immediate adjustments that I will practice is the concept map. I am going to create lesson outline with using concept maps together with text and images, and will distribute it at the  beginning of the lesson. At the end of the unit, we will fill the concept map together with students and review the lesson. According to research, this will provide a dual coding and will improve the understanding of students (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010c). Another immediate adjustment that I am going to do is VoiceThreads. I will ask my students to post their presentation to the VoiceThread. As a result, everybody can comment on presentation in a longer time period, and I can follow the participation of the students.

The first long term goal that I plan to incorporate is Microsoft Kodu. I will organize a Create your Physics Game competition, and ask students to create a physics related game with using Microsoft Kodu. This will engage students to physics, teach them basic programming abilities, and make their physics knowledge enduring. I downloaded Kodu Game Lab (from here) and classroom kit (from here). Once I feel myself confident, I will introduce this program and competition to the administration and perform school wide physics game competition. Like Dr. Orey (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010d) states that firsthand experience is necessary to understand, and participants will build a game and gain firsthand experience from this competition.

Second long term goal that I am planning to use is virtual trips. Together with my students, we will collect the links of physics related virtual trips from the internet, and will use them whenever appropriate. Everyone is welcome to submit their virtual trip links related to the high school physics. At the beginning or middle of the lesson, I may introduce virtual trip to the students. I think this will help them to relax and enjoy the lesson. They may ask questions that they wonder and share their real world experiences. I am sure that this will engage students to the lesson.

In conclusion, this course taught me that there are lots of new education technology tools, online resources and software. Instead of searching same sites again and again, I should start thinking out of the box and perform wild searches to find new strategies, technologies and tools. I am sure that while I am writing this post, someone is uploading a new education tool to the website, and, as a teacher, it is my duty to check efficiency of this tool and use in my class to improve my teaching performance, and help students to learn better.

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Program seven. Constructionist and constructivist learning theories [Webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010a). Program one. Understanding the brain [Webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010b). Program five. Cognitive learning theory [Webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010c). Program five. Cognitive learning theory [Webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Thurmond, A. (1999a). Constructionism. Retrieved from The San Francisco State University Web site: http://online.sfsu.edu/~foreman/itec800/finalprojects/annmariethurmond/defconstructionism.html

Social Learning and Connectivism Theory based Learning strategies

from College of Education website

In previous posts, I tried to explain behaviorism, cognitive theory and constructionist theory. In summary, behaviorism focuses on actions of a human being and believes that the human mind is too complex. As a result, behaviorists treat human like animals and develop learning strategies that include motivation, punishment, award and practice. Cognitive theory focuses on the human mind and suggests that we can understand how brain works. Cognitive theory states that the human brain works like a computer, and develop learning strategies accordingly with focusing on information processing. Constructivist theory says that people learn by construction and making things. According to this theory; there is no common knowledge, and everybody must create their own form of knowledge. Constructionist theory advice student centered learning strategies that ease students to create their own knowledge (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010).

Social Learning from youtube

Theories mentioned above belong to 19th and 20th century. 21st century is completely different, and kindergarteners are using technological devices that were just dreams 20 years ago. The biggest difference between yesterday’s world and today’s world is in the communication area. Pigeons and horses are long gone, and snail mail is dying. It takes a minute or less to send a message to any corner of the world. Moreover, one can watch African Sahara live from Alaska. What I am trying to say is; the world is connected. We are connected to each other via cell phones, Internet radio and TV, and information is connected via websites and digital libraries. In other words, knowledge is networked, and today’s people learn with navigating networked knowledge (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010), and communicating with each other. Therefore, there should be a new learning theory that includes navigation based learning and communication based learning.

Albert Bandura, Social Learning and his Bobo Doll experiment from youtube

The first theory that included communication technology is social learning theory of Bandura (click here for his biography). Bandura researched about the effects of TV, and TV commercials and he found out that watching TV affects the actions of children. In his theory, Bandura (Boeree, 2006) stated that people learn with following attention, retention, reproduction and motivation steps. In short, people must pay attention to learn new information. Second, people must remember that they paid attention to an action or information. Third, people must try to reproduce and model the action that they observed, and finally, they must have motivation will to imitate the action.

George Siemens - Connectivism: Socializing Open Learning from youtube

Recently, George Siemens (click here for his biography) developed connectivism theory to explain the effect of networked knowledge on learning. Siemens (Davis, Edmunds, & Kelly-Bateman, 2008) defined his new connectivisim theory with following sentences:

“Connectivism is driven by the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations. New information is continually being acquired, and the ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital. Also, critical is the ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday.”

Siemens (2005) also stated the principles of connectivism such as “learning and knowledge rest in diversity of opinions.” And “ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.” For detailed information, you may visit http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Jan_05/article01.htm or his website http://www.connectivism.ca/.

Connectivism and Technology from youtube

As a teacher, I am interested in applications and strategies based on learning theory rather than the learning theory alone. As I stated above, technology provide us new education tools, and one can develop new teaching strategies and methods with using those tools such as social networking and internet.

Cooperative Learning from youtube

One of the strategies that include social learning and connectivism is cooperative learning. In this strategy, students should be grouped according to their ability levels, group size should be small, and should include other classroom structures (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007). In cooperative learning strategy, students required to work in groups, communicate with others and observe other group members. Therefore, this strategy includes social learning theory, because everybody observe each other, and connectivisim because group members share their knowledge. Thanks to technology, teachers can choose group members from all over the world, and one student can work together with a student from another school form another part of the world on the same project. As a result, student groups can work on the same project from different locations with using shared calendar, shared documents, and wiki pages. Additionally, students can communicate with each other with email, cellphone and other communication tools. Students can share their projects with creating their web spaces and wikispaces.

Jigsaw groupwork for cooperative learning from youtube

In conclusion, technology and internet opened a wide window for us to develop new strategies, and as teachers, we must work hard to learn and use new technology tools. Web 2.0 tools such as wiki, blogs, podcasts, facebook and other social networking tools are great tools to start new cooperative learning strategies.

For more information about connectivisim learning theory and its applications, you may click here and here. 

References

Boeree, C. (2006). Personal Theories Albert Bandura. Retrieved from Shippensburg University Web site: http:/​/​webspace.ship.edu/​cgboer/​bandura.html

Davis, C, Edmunds, E, & Kelly-Bateman, V. (2008). Connectivism. In M. Orey (Ed.), Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved <insert date>, from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Program nine. Connectivism as a learning theory [Webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroominstruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD

Siemens, G. (2005, January). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology & Distance Learning, Retrieved from http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Jan_05/article01.htm