Social Class

To be successful in life, it is inevitable that you will have to make connections with other people. Even if most of your work is done individually you must still work with others to make a difference in the world. I believe the same holds true for learning. While many people can learn well on their own, it is the connections they make with others that can really help their learning take shape. This week at Walden we explored social learning theories (SLT’s). SLT’s are old news when it comes to education, however, with advances in technology there are many exciting learning experiences that teachers can offer. The book Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works, offers a variety of technology applications to support cooperative learning activities. As noted in this book, technology can facilitate collaboration, provide structure for group tasks, and allow group members to communicate anytime, anywhere.

To provide structure for group tasks, teachers can create an online learning community by using online course management systems (CMS). These systems can give classes a base camp where students can go to view and share resources and host discussions. An example of a free CMS is Moodle (http://moodle.org). If your class does not offer such a system, groups can take it upon themselves to get organized. Using a shared bookmarking site, such as del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us.), group members can post and categorize anything from the web and store it in one convenient location. This way, students do not have to remember the links to websites or where they have saved pictures and other files. In order to stay on schedule, groups can also create a shared calendar and make updates to their project as they progress. If teachers can access these calendars, they will also be able to monitor the group’s progress. Members of Yahoo and Google have access to their free calendars.

To engage students in cooperative learning activities, technology provides many opportunities to implement social constructionism. Videos, websites, and PowerPoint presentations are just a few of the artifacts that students can work together to create. However, constructionism is not the only strategy to keep students engaged. Web-enabled multiplayer simulation games offer a great way to engage students. With students completing virtual tasks that simulate real-world scenarios, their team must work together to be successful. WebQuests are inquiry-based activities that offer students the flexibility of online learning to work together on a project. San Diego State University hosts the original WebQuest site (http://webquest.org), offering education about WebQuests as well as allowing teachers to find examples or create their own.

The most unique aspect of online collaboration is the fact that students can collaborate with other students outside of their class. This could include other students in their own school or even in another country. Websites such as ePALS (www.epals.com/) have developed an online community for students around the world. Equally impressive is that students can collaborate with real experts from the field in which they are studying. There are many organizations that students may contact directly to ask questions. Some websites, like AllExperts (www.allexperts.com), are devoted to linking users with experts. Probably the coolest collaboration tool that I have seen is the JASON Project (www.jasonproject.org). This project allows students to participate in live expeditions from around the world. So the next time your class is studying volcanoes, why not let them visit a real volcano as researchers open their expedition to the online community?


To wrap up our exploration of social learning, I created my first VoiceThread. The link to this VoiceThread is below. Please feel free to have a look at it but direct any comments to my blog instead of the VoiceThread. I will be using it this week in class but still look forward to your feedback. I am confident that VoiceThread will offer my students a great way to collaborate, so let's have a look and see. 


Line Graphs and Linear Equations VoiceThread:
http://voicethread.com/share/2920905/

Under Construction

Teaching science for the past four years has been very enjoyable. I loved discussing the different topics in class and helping my students work together to build their own understanding of them. With interesting concepts for students to learn, science seems to lend itself naturally to building a constructive learning environment. Now that I am teaching math, my students do not seem to have the same drive to learn that my students in science class had. Therefore, I must offer lessons that help my students gain interest in math and work hard to construct their own understanding of it.

This week in my graduate course, we explored several learning strategies to help develop a constructivist classroom. Of course, one of these strategies was to incorporate constructionism, which is where students create an artifact to give them direction throughout the lesson and eventually reveal their learning. Other strategies were to develop project-based and problem-based learning environments where students are actively involved in identifying projects to tackle and problems to solve. A learning environment with a blend of these strategies is ideal so that students can complete tasks that allow them to use their strengths as well as tasks that challenge them to make accommodations in their mind in order to be successful. The common theme is that the students are always actively learning by asking questions, developing and testing hypotheses, and seeking the help of their classmates, teachers, and other valuable resources to complete their work. This exemplifies a constructive learning environment in that the students are in charge of learning and the teacher serves as a facilitator. The result is that students gain a much deeper understanding and are able to retrieve information from their long-term memory much more efficiently.

The efficiency of technology plays an important role in developing a constructive learning environment. From interactive games to spreadsheets and data collection tools, technology allows students to learn more about the content of a class and less on doing busy work to set up a project or experiment. As the scientific method suggests, students should be able to identify a problem and work through the necessary steps to solve it. The same method will apply to my math students as they work to solve a problem, create an artifact, or complete a project. As long as they follow the necessary steps, in the end, they will gain a deep understanding of anything they put their mind to.

Don't Forget How to Remember

This week in class we learned about how the human brain processes information as well as some learning strategies that support this knowledge. In the video titled “Cognitive Learning Theories,” Dr. Michael Orey begins by explaining that information enters our brains through sensory registers. This information is immediately sent to our short-term memory which, to process effectively, must not exceed between five and nine pieces of information at a time. If you process this information more deeply through rehearsal or other methods, then it becomes stored in our long-term memory. The types of information that are stored in our long-term memory include facts and information (declarative), how to do things (procedural), and very powerful memories that deal with events in our life (episodic).

Dr. Orey continues by discussing how to enhance the efficiency of our long-term memory by triggering as many senses as possible when processing information. Since our long-term memory is a network of information, activating our prior knowledge and connecting ideas to others can help us improve our retrieval of memories. When someone forgets something, it does not mean that they have lost it forever. It simply means that this person cannot remember the necessary connections to retrieve that information.

The learning strategies we explored this week can significantly help our students improve their memory. These include the use of elaboration, experiential learning, Palvio’s dual coding hypothesis, and concept maps. According to Dr. Orey, elaboration is the “primary mechanism for storing information in long-term memory.” This requires students to make as many connections as possible to their prior knowledge and experiences. By doing this, students will be better able to retrieve this information when they need it. When students reflect on their experiences, they are exemplifying the process of experiential learning. Through these reflections, students are able to analyze new information and connect it to their personal experiences. One way to enhance these connections is by introducing new information in the form of visuals.  The dual coding hypothesis states that information is stored as images and text. The main idea here is that images, when linked to information and our senses, can provide very strong connections to help our memory. Not only can the use of images support our memory, but organizing information into concept maps can support our memory throughout the learning process. Concept maps serve as a way to visually demonstrate how different pieces of information are connected. This allows the learner to store information as neatly organized images and be able to make connections much more easily. Teachers can use concept maps when introducing new information, reinforcing it, and allowing students to demonstrate an understanding of it. They are a very effective tool that I plan to use consistently in my classroom.

With all of this knowledge about memory, teachers can be much more strategic when designing learning experiences. To make the learning process more efficient and engaging, teachers can integrate technology to help students synthesize information and support their memory. After reading this week’s chapters from the book Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works, I now have many tools to make this happen. In order to help students prepare for each lesson, I plan to cue them in on what they are going to be learning. To guide them their learning experiences, I plan to use questions that will not only provide their learning with purpose, but will also spark their interest. To fully prepare my students, using advance organizers will help them make better sense of poorly organized information. While they are engaged in their lessons, they will use a variety of technology applications to help remember important information. Summarizing and note taking also offers a lot of opportunities for students to engage in these applications. With technology engaging my students, using cognitive tools to help strengthen their understanding, and making connections to support their memory, they will begin to develop into fully skilled students who are actively engaged in their own education.

Reinforcing Effort

A major problem with my eighth grade math students is that many of them do not take responsibility for their learning. They will do whatever it takes to get out of doing work, even if it means cheating. I had a handful of students cheat on their chapter test last week, even after spending a considerable amount of class time preparing for it. I can honestly say that a majority of my students put forth just enough effort to get a grade that is acceptable to their parents which, in many cases, is just a C. I have tried very hard this year to encourage them to put forth more effort and take responsibility for their learning. Instead, many of them continue focus their effort on getting the grade they need to stay out of trouble. 

That is why I found chapter eight in the book “Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works” very resourceful. Titled “reinforcing effort,” chapter eight offers a couple of great ideas to help encourage students to put forth more effort. One of these ideas is to have students use a rubric to record the effort they put into class each week. Sample categories in the rubric which are used to measure effort are note taking, attention, participation, homework, and studying. The values for each of these categories are added up to determine the total value for the effort the student puts forth each week. The students take a test at the end of each week and record their test score into the spreadsheet.  Once the students create a graphic representation of this data, they are able to see the effect that their effort has on their class grade. However, this cannot be done in just one week. It may take several weeks before students can recognize the relationship between effort and their grade.

In relation to the behaviorist learning theory, the grade that the students receive can serve as reinforcement for their effort. If a student receives a bad grade and recognizes that their lack of effort was the cause of this, then they will certainly put forth more effort in the future. If a student receives a good grade, then they will likely continue to put forth a good amount of effort. Throughout this school year, I have been telling my students that their grades are a direct reflection of their effort in class. I realize that simply telling them is not enough, so I have taken measures to support this. At the end of each quarter, I have given each student a detailed copy of their grades from that quarter. Then, my students calculated their overall class grade at the end of each week during the quarter. They created a line graph, by hand, to represent this data and then proceeded to analyze the graph. Following their analysis, they wrote a story about their experiences in my class during the previous quarter, noting how these experiences were reflected in the graph they created.

Essentially, this activity was very similar to the “reinforcing effort” activity in chapter eight. However, I now realize that there are several things that I can do to improve the activity I created. For one, using Microsoft Excel will help my students gain more interest in the graphing portion of the activity. Another is that the stories that my students wrote may or may not help them identify the relationship between their grade and their effort. It seems that using a rubric with more specific indicators would certainly help. One more improvement would be to have my students record the data on a weekly basis instead of at the end of each quarter. By performing this activity more consistently and in a more precise manner, my students will definitely put forth more effort in my class.

The behaviorist learning theory has a place in every classroom. To get the desired behavior out of your students, you must effectively use positive and negative reinforcement. Not only will you help your students get a better grade, but you will also help them build the skills they need to be successful lifelong learners.