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.

Be Kind To Your Brain It Remembers What You Do

Introduction

How is your memory? Do you remember what you did 10 years ago, but not what day of the week it is today?  Are dates such as anniversaries of relatives important to you?  If you are married, they better be!

Do you know that when you are intoxicated it is the result of just having added toxins to your blood?  Do you that is not good to do over and over and over? Your brain will eventually get even with you for treating it badly.

Some people call misusing of drugs or alcohol as getting stupid.  In the long run, they are right.  It is very sad and frustrating to me that there are thousands of people out there who would give anything to have a normal functioning brain without learning or other disabilities while others are abusing their gift of a well functioning brain.

Enough of the lecture, now on with more on learning theories.

Thought for Today

Have you given much thought about how people learn?  Have you thought about what your children's teachers do behind the scenes to make lessons that are appropriate for all children?  Do you realize that your son or daughter might learn differently from their brother or sister, or friends?  Educators are faced with this daily.

If no child is to be left behind, it is important to know how to teach all children.  Now with the new Common Core standards we still can not leave children behind, and hopefully we will have more children learning to compete in this 21st century and shrinking world.  We do not want the USA to be left behind as it appears to be doing when it comes to a labor force ready for today's technology.

What is Cognitive Behavior and Why is it Important?

One way to define Cognitive Behavior is to include the use of behaviors related to intellectual processes such at thinking, reasoning, memorizing and problem solving. It also includes analyzing and applying. (Information retrieved on January 19, 2014 from: http://www.upei.ca/~xliu/measurement/glossary.htm)

However among learning theorists, there is a Behaviorist Theory, and a Cognitive Theory.  You can see how it gets confusing.  Several people think the behaviors overlap and others prefer to keep them separate studies.

As an educator I just want my students to be successful adults, so I do my best to prepare them for the demands of the future.  As you search the WWW, you will find a wealth of information on learning theories and behaviors.

Learning how individual students think, reason, memorize, problem solve, analyze, and apply information is important for those writing curriculum, and very important for those planning lessons based on that curriculum.  Remember the people that plan the curriculum (including what must be learned during a year, and what books the school district will use to meet the state and federal standards for learning) are not the people teaching it.

Metagognitive Skills

As students develop learning styles and the ways that they are able to successfully perform cognitive behaviors, they are developing their metagognitive skills. Do individuals have different metagognitive skills?  Yes.

There is a blog site, Udemy, and their tagline says that they are "the world's largest destination for online courses".  On January 10th of this year Eric James Anderson posted an insightful blog entry titled, Metacognitive Strategies for Expert Learning.  I will add the link for this post at the end of this posting.

The courses at Udemy.com are reasonably priced, and I am mentioning this because the quality of this post by Anderson was great for me. I appreciate the fact that Anderson realizes that everyone is allowed to have their own strategy for learning.  I need it to be quiet and once in a while can have some instrumental music going in the background, but nothing with lyrics, because then I lose my own thoughts.  While others can read and retain the information with either music, television, or sitting in Starbucks with way too much activity for my learning style.

I just want you to know up front that if you go to this blog they will want you as a customer, but it is not all that much hype, and there are excellent articles.

Adults vs Children vs Metacognitive Skills

Adults are the lucky ones because usually by the time they leave high school and hopefully sooner, they know what strategies they need to use to be successful at learning.  They are able to set their own learning goals, arrange their times and places that they will devote to the learning process.  Now, they even can choose how to pick a college or university that fits with their learning skills.  The world is a great place now for people to continue learning with all the great individualized choices.

Children require teachers and parents to help them make the right choices for learning.  Some children will not procrastinate but do their school work before other activities such as television, telephone, or video games.  Others need parents to be parents and set the rules and emphasize the importance of staying up to date and current with school assignments.

If there was one thing I wish my parents would have done differently it would have been to teach me better time management and organizational skills.  Since they both worked and both worked long hours and different schedules, I grew up pretty independent and self guided.  It is a good thing that I had friends who were good students, or things could have been a lot different.  Still I lacked the organizational skills that would have been beneficial.

Here is the link for the Udemy site (I am not affiliated with them in any way, so do not get any commissions or payment if you visit them from this page).  Udemy Site Link  If you do create an account they have access to free courses, too. 

Please leave a comment if you enjoyed this post.  

The Trouble With Looking For Information for Instructional Designers

Yet another posting for today.  You can see by the large font that my eyes are getting tired as I continue to search for just the right blog where I can set up a dialog of some sort.  I have tried last night and once again for almost 4 hours today.

What have I discovered?  There is a lot of great information out there, but a lot of it is geared towards the reader making a purchase. Can a reader get through the information without making a purchase.  Yes, so far, this one has.  Since I do not want to join a community right now, but I do want to keep gathering information on learning theories and the brain, I will keep my search going and adding RSS feeds to a feed reader.

I am also going to add a few more links here and the insights that I have gained from venturing to these latest sites on my journey and quest for more knowledge.
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First I found my friend, Gary Page's blog, and it is focused on Career Technical Education and all the opportunities available by reviewing what certain school districts in California are able to accomplish.  Gary sends me several emails during the week, and it gives me so many ideas of ways to reach students.  You have to have the right school district to accomplish some of these things though.  

With the state of school budgets, giving our students all the opportunities we want to give them to leave high school ready to compete in the job market outside of the fast food, or retailing industries is a challenge.  

Our wood shop on our campus has been forced to close.  This year they lost all of their power tools due to fears of injuries and what might result.  Now students create with non electrical tools, and they still love it. The class has young men and women who really look forward to spending an hour a day doing something creative with their hands and still learning some basic math calculations.

Gary's blog gives me hope that perhaps our school can expand our technology classes by combining them with core content subjects that gives our students the opportunity to see the why of learning math or a science course as they apply it to something dealing with technology.

I am hoping that school districts and politicians who create funding and policies for student can wake up and smell the 21st century needs for education.  Education needs to get out of the one room school house mentality of drill and kill, and more into some hands on relevant learning.

That is my band wagon, that so many of us are afraid to join.  Back to Gary's blog.  It is Ed Synergy and located at http://www.edsynergy.org

Why should you be aware of this blog?  I am posting a listing of the categories that might help answer the question.

• Archive
• Business and Industry
• Career Ready Certifications
• Community Engagement
• Curriculum and Standards
• Educator News
• Effective Practices
• Opinions and Hot Topics
• Outside the Classroom
• Post Secondary Pathways
• Professional Development

If you just looked at this one posting titled: New Integrated Course for the ICT Networking Pathway  on Gary's blog you will see just one project that has recently gained approval for implementation in California schools.  You can see that developing these courses is not an easy process when you read that there was a collaboration to develop the course between different people working in 3 different school districts.  In order for the courses to be approved they have to have rigorous and relevant content.

According to this quote from the EdSynergy blog, this is what the students gain from taking this course.  

Students having the knowledge and skills to understand and operate networks are critical to California because our 21st century economy runs on digital networks. Organizations of all kinds depend on a workforce educated to design, build and operate these networks.

I left a comment on this article since I know how much effort is involved in getting a course like this approved.  It is cause for much celebration.  I hope that many students will be able to benefit from this course.
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Another site I found was through following links on another classmate's blog.  I mentioned the site called Articulate in a post yesterday.  Today I went back to the site to see what more was on there.  This site is huge with information about elearning.

Most of us who are involved with ID, need to know about e learning.  While I am still the ID Newbie, I am finding out more and more about what I need to know.

They have several blogs on their site that are authored by the registered users.  There is a lot of information about putting together a course and story lines.  There is also a lot of information about jobs that are available in this field.

This week at Walden we are studying learning theories.  When I looked at this website with all the blogs and the overwhelming amount of information, I could see the importance of using the right tools for your audience.  Seeing all this information has made me realize that to be professional as an Instructional Designer and to have success you have to do know who you are teaching.  Do you have to know how each individual learns to be successful?  That is the question.

People may debate whether we need to know how the brain functions to be successful educators, and theorists may battle each other, but the bottom line is that when you are teaching you want your audience to be engaged.  This e learning community can help us to do that with tutorials, and blogs and a wealth of knowledge being shared on hoe to make your presentations better.

I am sure most of us at this stage in our education have had some pretty bad experiences with power point readers and instructors who could not engage the class in rousing instructions. How many times do we leave a presentation saying to ourselves or are fellow attendees, "I learned a lot from that presentation.  I can't wait to be able to use this."?  I know the times I have said that have been less often than I would like it to be.

Knowing how to engage a variety of learners is vital to success.

Cognitive Neuroscience Society Website

As I search for more ways to learn about Cognitive and Metacognitve learning I ran across this blog this morning, and am adding it here so I can keep a record of it.  Since my studies in Learning Theories at Walden U have lead me to explore more about how people learn I am so thankful for the large amount of information on the Internet.

Right now I am looking for a blog where I can add some insightful comments.  The CNS website does not allow for comments.  However, it contains some great articles on brain functioning, and memory.  Some things you might have thought of and others, maybe not.

Here is their link:  https://www.cogneurosociety.org/

They have an active membership that uses Twitter, too.  So if you enjoy Twitter you might want to add them to keep up on the latest news.  Two articles interested me this morning.

One was titled, When Gazing Into Nothing Helps Us Remember.  Can eye movement be a key to memory?  That is a question they are addressing.  Would it be possible to decorate next year's Christmas tree exactly like you decorated this year's tree?  What about getting a new computer and arranging your desktop icons the same as they were on the old computer? Could you do it?  What if you were not able to access the old computer?

While this type of research might not effect you, maybe it will.  Do you have trouble remembering where you left your car keys or glasses?  While it might not help us to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution, tips on how to remember are almost always beneficial to me.There is more ongoing research so you might want to follow this blog, too.

Another article on the CNS site has to deal with Optical Illusions.  Anyone who knows me knows that I am fascinated by them.  I think most people are because it seems like our eyes can play tricks on our brain of visa-versa.    How can a two dimensional drawing appear to be moving?

Using optical illusions to study how the brain work is nothing new.  However it is still being written about and researched.  I remember using this picture all through school to study perception.

What do you see when you look at this image?  How many things do you see?  It is fun to read the research behind this.  These images have been around for a  long time, and they are classic.  There are so many of them and people are finding or creating new ones every year it seems.

Here is one of my favorites, but it can make you dizzy.  It is even better if it is enlarged.  you can get more depth to it.

Finally, this one is just fun!

Do optical illusions lead to more understanding of  perception and focus?  Is seeing really believing?  How could you use this knowledge in teaching?