Fitting Learning Theory and Learning Style Pieces Together: My Views

Learning Theory & Styles Questions to Consider

• Now that you have a deeper understanding of the different learning theories and learning styles, how has your view on how you learn changed?

• What have you learned about the various learning theories and learning styles over the past weeks that can further explain your own personal learning preferences?

• What role does technology play in your learning (i.e., as a way to search for information, to record information, to create, etc.)?

The above questions were taken from my course at Walden University.  EDUC-6115-5 Learning Theories Instruction.

Image borrowed from: http://www.ccsf.edu/content/ccsf/en/about-city-college/slo/professional_development/learning_styles/_jcr_content/contentparsys/imagebanner/image.img.jpg/1360704177544.jpg

When I first started this course almost 8 weeks ago, I had theories and styles a bit confused, and it was all overwhelming.  I felt intimidated and could not believe that people could be stuck in one learning style or theory of learning.  Since sharing discussions on the forums and reading a vast amount of material on the Internet, and in books, I feel a lot more comfortable with how people, including myself learn.  

Since I am currently teaching I am working on adapting this to the needs of my students.  I have always wanted to help the ones who struggle with Sciences, History, and Math.  It is frustrating to see the ones who actually do study get poor testing grades.   That has been one of my areas of silent protest with the way I have to grade my students where I work. They can tell me what they read, and what they understand.  We can even have an interesting discussion about revolutions in France, Russia, and China, and of course compare it to the USA's revolution from England and the Civil War.  However something happens from the time they leave me, to the time they sit down to take the test.  All our tests are taken on computers in a designated room.

Some how it is difficult to get several of my students to think out of the box when it comes to studying.  I have always thought out of the box when it comes to studying.  I have made up songs, rhymes, associated a variety of things to remember a concept.  I will have to continue to explore ways to break through to my students that it is ok, to picture a paper clip and have it remind you of the Battle of Trafalgar.

Personally, I know that I need absolute quiet when I am reading, writing, or studying.  I know I need a lot of breaks to get up and walk around, unless I am totally into writing, then nothing can stop me.  Sort of how I am now.  I am too much of a rebel to go with the Behaviourist Theory of learning for myself, but can see how it applies to others.  I also have a friend who teaches Special Education for the county, and has very low learners.  She spends a lot of time with repetition, over and over.  She excels at Paper Plate Art.  Her photos are extraordinary.  The art is all with a purpose to associate drawings that students make of animals or objects that relate to words, pronunciation, letters, and spelling.

I learn by my discussions with her.  Perhaps is she can teach very low learners this way, I can adapt it to my high school students.  Perhaps by making fun out of something I run away from learning, I, too, can achieve mastery.  There are still things that I tend to want to run away from as far as my own learning.

I have looked at the way this course was designed and it had/has a very good sequence of learning to it.  I can see that we started from what we knew with the first week's discussion. The topic was about learning theories, but most of us wrote about our learning styles.  We all started in a comfort zone of what we knew, with a bit of learning theory introduction in the reading.  

I learn a lot by the social aspect of reading what others in the class have written, and responding to them.  Sometimes they use a reference that I feel I have missed so I can go reread the article, to see how I missed it.  The social interaction and sharing is very important to me.  Sometimes I feel that I am off track when my discussion posts seem to get lost in the sea of other discussion posts, but by taking time to read and respond to as many as I can, I gain valuable information, and see that several of my peers think very similar to how I think. That is reassuring.

I would be lost without technology.  I can chunk my learning into smaller bits and pieces by reading articles and then get more clarification by searching keywords to see what others have written about the topic.  It is great when I see at least 3 blogs mention the authors we are studying in our course work.  I am fortunate to have web access on my campus so that I can use a tablet during breaks to access Walden University, or google documents to work on my assignments, or read discussion postings.

I discuss with peers at work when I come up with great ideas to help our students that I have due to a discussion board posting, or a web based search, or course reading.  By sharing what I have learned it reinforces what I have learned.  Teaching is an excellent way to learn.

Image taken from:

http://dixiedarr.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/learning-styles-300x201.gif

Learning Theory Matrix

I recently completed a Learning Theory Matrix Chart.  I was hoping to be able to embed it on this blog, but have not been able to get it here yet.  I will take some screen shots of it, and then include the link where you can view it. There were 6 questions addressed regarding each learning theory.  If you would rather view this with the link I, just click on it here.  This is the spreadsheet I created in Google Drive.

I am following up this post with another post on how making this chart and exploring learning theories and learning styles has contributed to how I now view learning.  That will be on the next post and I will come back and add the link to it here, too.

Connectivism Mind Map

As I was creating my second mind map for Connectivism, I expanded the first one I made.  Here is the newest one:

It is a bit small, however you can open it in a new window if you click on it.  One change I would make in this mind map on connectivism would result in the drawing below.

As I was creating changes in the mind map, I felt that Connectivism emcompasses communication.  I have seen where others suggest that connectivism also includes all of the other learning theories, and I think that might also be true.  We do not learn simply by using all of the resources in the image above, but we have had to get our learning to the level to where we are able to use external resources.

This could go into an endless circle of discussion of how the learning theories are connected, or blended into each other.

As far as my personal learning is affected, the tools that I use online and have used ever since I discovered the Internet have greatly increased my learning power.  

Now that I am at the age where friends are having grandchildren, I am noticing how infants act and how they have a motivation to learn.  Is their learning intrinsic?  It seems that it is necessary to survival.  Is it based on basic behavior theory?  If they cry, they get a response, and hopefully it is always a positive one.  When they do something cute and funny they also get a response from the adults around them.  Babies fortunate enough to always be around supportive grandparents and parents are happy babies.  I am not sure if they learn faster, maybe they just learn to react or act differently from babies who do not have the family connections.

I am including this as a way to discover how the motivation to learn stays with some (or is it most people) throughout life. We go from infancy and learning behavior and responses either positive to negative, and then into elementary school about 5 years later, where we are still either being praised or negatively reinforced for our behaviors. I was not praised for my intelligence as an elementary student.  I talked too much, and now as an adult I still talk, but mostly to myself.

Even though I was never the ones the teachers gave their attention to as having some great gift for learning, I still was motivated to learn.  I loved to learn.  I was always reading books from the library.  I was always fascinated with machinery and always there to help my father work on the car, or the washing machine, or to be around watching when he was building something.

The motivation carried over into my adult life.  It had to be intrinsic since I was always shy and never wanted to stand out from the crowd.  In high school my friends were all the smartest kids in the school.  I think they liked me because I made them laugh.  They had 4.0 gpa's and I worked like crazy to keep above a 3.0.  They were all in AP classes.  I wasn't.  It made me wonder what was wrong with my brain.  I liked hanging out with the smart kids.  I loved their vocabularies, and how their brains worked.  Their parents were professionals, mine were not.  They lived in really nice houses, I lived on the other side of the tracks.  Looking back, I am really thankful that they were my friends.  It gave me more motivation to complete college, and for the importance of knowing how to communicate well.

Not everyone has that motivation that carries over into adulthood. When you look at my mind map, you see tools I use to increase my knowledge.    How does the motivation for learning change?  Why do people choose to watch mindless television shows or play games where they want you to play so you can help them feed their farm animals instead of watching something educational (not Duck Dynasty), or using search engines for more information?

Does our educational system inhibit learning for those who struggle, and teach them to settle for less?  There are so many tools out there now to help everyone. Is connectivism only for the adult learner, or should it be brought into education a lot sooner?

I looked at Stephen Downes's blog, and that lead me to his www.slideshare.net presentation titled, Connectivism: A Theory of Personal Learning (2008).  He has pictures of his personal learning environment.  It is mostly a laptop, and related mice, keyboards, monitors.  Maybe there is a tower hidden on the floor.  His learning tools are a bit different from mine, and perhaps I would add some of his next time.

There is a great quote from Aristotle with a picture of a child using some science tools.  The quote reads, "We learn how to do things by doing the things we are learning to do."  That is a great quote! 

Stephen Downes is an advocate for free learning resources.  I think the world has changed a lot since 2008, and more and more the tools are being sold.  However there is still so much available free, when you open the World Wide Web.  

I recommend spending the time to view the 97 slides, and I will include the link at the end of this posting.  You can see how without looking at this presentation before starting my personal mind map, I use some of the same things that Downes does, but he seems to have a better way of presenting it. This one presentation of his can lead to hours of discoveries.

This is the way of the web, and all the technology we have at our disposal.  If there was a lot when Downes made this presentation in 2008, you know there is a whole lot more information available now.

How do I keep from being overwhelmed with all the information? Which tools help me the most?  I would have to list Google Search as the top tool for me.  From Google Search I can choose how I want to view the information.

The menu at the top where I can choose, Books, Images, Videos, More,  or Search Tools, helps me to narrow my search.  Google used to have one where you could specify blogs.  Maybe blogs are the main source in results now.  I wonder how many others start their searching with Google.

I enjoy videos, because I can pause them.  Videos with transcripts are even better for my learning style.  I can print out the transcript and make notes in it as I pause the video, or highlight areas I want to refer back to later.

Blogs are a great resource for me.  There are usually ways to contact the author.  However when you are using an older blog there is no guarantee that you will have your questions answered. Most blog readers who take time to read comments will have something positive to say, and might offer help for your question.  It is not the same on YouTube where comments can be just cruel.

There are ways to use the hash tags (#) on Social Networks, to search for people who comment on things of interest, or you can find Google Plus Groups, or groups in Facebook.  You can even start your own.  Build your own personal network of people with similar interests.  I have networks for different areas of interest.

Connectivism takes into account that the world is rapidly changing due to the availability of information from the whole world. Theories might change rapidly as we are able to access more information using the Internet.  However with this information we have to be able to determine what is truth and what is fiction.  We have to consider there is a world of talented graphic artists who can make a whole reality based on what they are capable of creating with drawings that seem to be real photographs (Siemens, 2004).

When I start with my individual knowledge, or lack of it, and then build my network for that knowledge, and conduct more research to determine the parts that are viable and those that are not necessary or not substantiated by facts, I can build a solid network. From just one person I can expand my knowledge globally, and stay up to date as new findings are produced.

Connectivism is based on the individuals need to know, and then the need to share.  Just as I had the smart friends in high school who were willing to share their knowledge with me, now that same practice has expanded more than I ever could imagine back then.

References:

Downes, S. (2008, December 3). Connectivism: A Theory of Personal Learning. Retrieved February 9, 2014, from http://www.slideshare.net/Downes/connectivism-a-theory-of-personal-learning

Siemens, G. (2004, December 12). Connectivism:  A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. Retrieved February 9, 2014,  from http://www.ingedewaard.net/papers/connectivism/2005_siemens_ALearningTheoryForTheDigitalAge.pdf

Connectivism

This is my first Mind Map using Free Mind software that is as the name implies, Free.  I am sure I have a lot to learn about using this, and I felt like reverting to a Word Document, but figured I would give this a try.

Right now at Walden University our assignment has to do with Connectivism.  While three weeks ago this was really new to me, I am learning more about it.  This is a test to see if my mind map is on track with assignment requirements, or if it needs more.  It if is on track, then I will either delete this post and start over adding more to it, or just edit the post.  I have not decided yet since I have more research to do.

Here is the image of my Connectivism Mind Map.
If you click on the image you can view it larger.  There are no active links on the image.