Chapter 2: Inspiring Student Learning with Technology

Focus Question: What are the implications of the latest research in the science of learning for teachers?

Knowledge is constructed, not transmitted. To learn it requires purpose and effort on the part of the learner as well as understanding based on what they already know and believe. In other words knowledge is built from our past experiences and is unique to ever person.

Three learning theories:

Behaviorism is a learning process of memorizing, demonstrating and imitating.

Cognitive science suggest that learning is also influenced by non observable and internal constructs, such as memory, motivation, perception, attention, and metacognitive skills.

Constructivism is when every person interprets and constructs the world in their own way; learning is a process of manipulating and interpreting the surrounding world

There are 2 approaches to teaching: teacher-centered and student-centered. New studies are challenging the way that teachers teach... which is traditionally teacher-centered teaching being lectures, textbooks, worksheets, and assessments. The competitor is with student-centered teaching that encourages students to be an active part of their learning from planning to conducting experiments and engaging in discussions. It encourages to actively engage students with one-on-one tutoring, learning groups, inquiry learning, and metacognitive thinking.

Tech Tool: Web Resources for Engagement and Collaboration

http://dnaftb.org/ The animation sections of this website is perfect for teaching middle or high school students who are being introduced to genetics. It was a great refresher for myself too.

http://www.tolerance.org/activities This is a great resource for lesson planning to introduce diversity. I can see myself going to this site to pull out resources to help integrate my classroom and have everyone come together with diversity activities. 

http://www.zoomerang.com/ is now merging with http://www.surveymonkey.com/home/ This site is great for collecting data for your classroom and allowing students to express their viewpoints in a non-threatening environment because it's anonymous. The downside is that the polls have to be short and have a limited amount of people can respond before the cost of using this website jumps to at least $17 a month!

http://chnm.gmu.edu/tools/polls/ I do not like this site. It has broken links and the thought process is confusing. I am having a hard time trying to find a purpose to this website.

Through stumbling through this site... I found another site that linked to ANOTHER site, http://www.icivics.org/ games that I think is a great resource. It's a game that allows kids to pretend to campaign for something in the process it teaches them the steps of how to do it.

http://discoveringantartica.org.uk/ This website is nothing but advertisements and would NOT be useful in a classroom. It would leave students going to hundreds of other sites.

Chapter Summary & Connection

As I grow into a teacher, one of my hopes is that I can learn to become a student-centered teacher who engages their students. I already see myself with my daughter guiding her yet allowing her the freedoms to learn what she wants at the time. I have a sensory table that I switch out the activities with. When I introduce a new activity to her I stand back for a good 10 minutes just watching how she interacts with the new surroundings... this I see as promoting metacognitive thinking as she's self-exploring and learning. Then I jump in and ask her questions, which seems to emphasize inquiry learning. When she is introduced to this topic more than once I can see the light bulb go off and she knows exactly what to do and finds more complex ways with working in her surroundings (this can also be viewed as a Montessori approach). My next challenge will be to learn how to use my skills and desires that I already have with my own daughter and apply it with technology and my future students.

Living in a digital age it is required to have visual literacy and information literacy. Visual literacy deals with how images, diagrams, charts and graphs are used to communicate with us, and information literacy is the ability to recognize, locate, evaluate, and organize and manipulate the information we find online. Without these competencies we would be lost to an online world believing everything we read.

I hope to be able to actively engage and collaborate with my students using technology. Even though I always did well in school, I had a hard time retaining the information learned overtime because I was never engaged with the information.