You’ve probably heard about the benefits of digital learning: It’s engaging, student-centered, often collaborative, and can increase student achievement.
But here’s the catch:
You and your students won’t reap these benefits if you don’t purposefully plan your use of technology.
Too often, teachers think of technology as something to check off of a list. “Does this lesson use technology? Nope…How can I sprinkle some in?” Using technology merely for the sake of using technology isn’t effective teaching.
Instead, here are five digital learning theories and models that can help you tap into the benefits of technology and enhance student outcomes.
The three broad learning theories most often utilized in the creation of instructional environments are Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism. These theories, however, were developed in a time when learning was not impacted through technology. In other words, they do not address learning that occurs outside of people, that is stored and manipulated by technology. Nowadays…
Last year Facebook passed up Google for the most visited site in the world. What an interesting trend we are seeing, where people are searching for connect
The teacher helps students make personal connections to the class, content, and learning. The power of connective instruction comes from the instructor helping students see the curriculum as critical to their current lives, their future, and their culture.
I have never been comfortable with proclamations by educators or scientists (and yes, there is a difference) about how the brain works. The logical fallacy goes something like this: "we have isolated a mechanism in the brain, learning takes place in the brain; therefore, we now know how learning works." Whenever a psychologist says something smug like "the brain doesn't work that way" (around 1:21), I want to pull my hair out.
This report introduces connected learning, a promising educational approach that uses digital media to engage students’ interests and instill deeper learning skills, such as communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. The report lists four elements constituting connected learning’s emphasis on bridging school, popular culture, home, and the community to create an environment in which students engage in and take responsibility for their learning.
This report introduces connected learning, a promising educational approach that uses digital media to engage students’ interests and instill deeper learning skills, such as communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. The report lists four elements constituting connected learning’s emphasis on bridging school, popular culture, home, and the community to create an environment in which students engage in and take responsibility for their learning.
This repport connects learning and digital media to engage students’ interests and instill deeper learning skills, such as communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. The report lists four elements constituting connected learning’s emphasis on bridging school, popular culture, home, and the community to create an environment in which students engage in and take responsibility for their learning.
Theories on how people learn are not new. Piaget, Bruner, Vygotsky, Skinner and others have theorized for years how it is we come to “know” things.
Unlike many theories involving physics for example, it is unlikely that a single learning theory is “right,” and will ultimately prove other theories “wrong.” How people learn is complex, and any unifying theory on how it all happens that’s entirely accurate would likely be too vague to be helpful. In that way, each “theory” is more of a way to describe one truth out of many.
Subscribing to both Bloom and Vygotsky’s social learning theory and currently Webb's Depth of Knowledge allows educators to build upon a student's learning experiences by scaffolding and facilitating questioning techniques to guide students from simple recall to higher levels of creative and critical thinking, thereby allowing them to reflect on their own thinking process. The visual primer is the realization of what "good teachers" and "good leaders" do (i.e. - making meaningful connections and then synthesizing the information).
In the Networked Society, connectivity will be the starting point for new ways of innovating, collaborating and socializing. INSPIRATIONAL VIDEO.
Can ICT redefine the way we learn in the Networked Society? Technology has enabled us to interact, innovate and share in whole new ways. This dynamic shift in mindset is creating profound change throughout our society. The Future of Learning looks at one part of that change, the potential to redefine how we learn and educate. Watch as we talk with world renowned experts and educators about its potential to shift away from traditional methods of learning based on memorization and repetition to more holistic approaches that focus on individual students' needs and self expression.
I am interested in learning more about the learning theory of Connectivism (Siemans, 2005) and connecting that to my pedagogy within information literacy instruction. I’ve learned that Connectivis...
The theory of Connectivism provides new insight into what it means to facilitate learning in the 21st Century. Those responsible for teaching and training need to incorporate instructional strategies that match learner expectations and the physical changes that technology has wrought on the human brain.
Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age George Siemens
Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism are the three broad learning theories most often utilized in the creation of instructional environments. These theories, however, were developed in a time when learning was not impacted through technology. Over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate, and how we learn. Learning needs and theories that describe learning principles and processes, should be reflective of underlying social environments. Vaill emphasizes that “learning must be a way of being – an ongoing set of attitudes and actions by individuals and groups that they employ to try to keep abreast of the surprising, novel, messy, obtrusive, recurring events…” (1996, p.42). Learners as little as forty years ago would complete the required schooling and enter a career that would often last a lifetime. Information development was slow. The life of knowledge was measured in decades. Today, these foundational principles have been altered. Knowledge is growing exponentially. In many fields the life of knowledge is now measured in months and years. Gonzalez (2004) describes the challenges of rapidly diminishing knowledge life: “One of the most persuasive factors is the shrinking half-life of knowledge. The “half-life of knowledge” is the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete. Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago. The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months according to the American Society of Training and Documentation (ASTD). To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.” Some significant trends in learning: Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime. Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience. Formal education no longer comprises the majority of our learning. Learning now occurs in a variety of ways – through communities of practice, personal networks, and through completion of work-related tasks. Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime. Learning and work related activities are no longer separate. In many situations, they are the same. Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking. The organization and the individual are both learning organisms. Increased attention to knowledge management highlights the need for a theory that attempts to explain the link between individual and organizational learning. Many of the processes previously handled by learning theories (especially in cognitive information processing) can now be off-loaded to, or supported by, technology. Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).
It maybe useful to distinguish the types of learner that we are promoting a connectivist model towards. Learners who are experienced in a particular domain can pull knowledge from a variety of sources to interact with existing schema. Having some domain knowledge already allows them to create the interaction independently.
At Online Educa, I gave a talk called '2500 years of learning - the good, the bad and the ugly'. It went down well but at the end Stephen Downes, who was in the audience, came up to me and made the reasonable claim, that I had mentioned Ng & Koller but not his good self. He was right. I have a lot of time for both of these guys, so I have rectified this by writing this short piece and will be including Downes and Siemens in my future versions of the talk.
One of the best perks of supporting the Los Angeles Central Library is advanced notice of the readings and talks coming through town as part of their ALOUD program.
I think the students in the Building Online Collaborative Environments Course has an almost impossible task. Here is their effort to prove that connectivism is a learning theory.
Longish online WizIQ presentation that looks mostly at the concept of learning theories and MOOCs. The first part examines in some detail the concept of knowledge rmployed in MOOC pedagogy - this is a view of knowledge as recognition of emergent phenomena from networks of connected entities. It them looks at learning theories properly so-called, which are theories describing the mechanisms that form, strengthen or weaken connections. From this is derives the main elements of MOOC pedagogy and network design. For audio and video, please see http://www.downes.ca/presentation/320
Connectivism is a theory of learning which emphasizes the role of the social and cultural context opposed to a more essentialist notion which foregrounds the...
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