Learning Theory

I really enjoyed what Bill Kerr states in his blog regarding the _isms is that "these _isms do not stand still.  They evolve, ..."  I couldn't agree with him more, because look at the direction education is heading in.  Granted I feel we are moving at a much slower pace than we should actually be moving at, at least we are incorporating real life technology to further enhance education.  We are moving away from the understanding of "how" a student learns, or "how" we as educators need to instruct.  Our philosophy on teaching is constantly evolving too, and that with the help of trial and error- seeing what we do in our class and how the students respond.  We are fortunate enough to evolve with our students, and those who do not evolve with their students, definitely get left behind.  Just as Karl Kapp states so eloquently in his blog: "The issue many forget is that “learning” is not one thing…it is a multi-layered word that tends to get treated as if it were just one thing…and it’s not. It is multi-facetted and that is why developing new models for “learning” is so difficult…there are too many levels for one school of thought or one model to do it all."

So in order for us to teach and learn and teach and learn, we need to constantly evolve by educating ourselves and staying with the trends our students are in.  If we cannot relate to them or use what they use every day, we are not going to succeed in educating them or get through to them.

Module 1

What are your beliefs about how people learn best? What is the purpose of learning theory in educational technology?

I believe people now a days are learning best via the resources they have at hand.  Our current population learns best from multiple tools that utilize the student's auditory, tactile, and visual stimuli.  The current generation is using more and more technology resources as they grow-- for example; the students are using cell phones at an earlier age.  The majority of students are using social websites such as myspace, facebook, and twitter to communicate. 

Learning theory in educational technology is helping to guide the way technology is starting to play an integral role in education.  TNLI Teacher's Network Leadership Institute is starting to play a key role in getting teachers involved in policy making in education.  Scholars such as John Dewey, and educational psychologists Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner propose that "children actively construct knowledge and this construction of knowledge happens in a social context."  These social contexts are starting to come out via the internet, phones, and gaming technologies.


https://sites.google.com/a/boisestate.edu/edtechtheories/caron_brennaman

http://www.teachersnetwork.org/tnli/