This week's topics are the brain and learning, information processing theory, and problem-solving methods during the learning process. Here's two resources that expands the discussion on these concepts and comments on their value from my perspective of teaching secondary students.
http://pequotlakes.k12.mn.us/userfiles/file/AEP04_2_6-1.PDF
This is a pretty easy to digest article that gives some general information about how the brain is structured and functions. Judging from the source, I would bet it gets used in a high school level psychology class and would be a good resource for that age group.
What really interested me about the article is the comparison of the brain's capacity to the Internet, especially when you consider the date of the article from ten years ago. According to the author, "The brain's interconnections exceed the Internet's by an astronomical number." I wonder if this is accurate today or will the Internet exceed the human brain in this area in the near future? It is a fascinating, science fiction like question, what will happen when our tools reach levels greater than our own?
The next article I looked into was "An Informational Processing Theory of Ambivalence" which I found using the Walden Library search features. I had mixed feelings about how this article could be used in a secondary education situation. (Pun intended)
Basically the authors wanted to analyze the sources of ambivalence towards political parties. With how polarized the political world seems today I felt this would be an interesting application of information processing theory and great way to blend civics/government with psychology. This is a very complex article, especially compared to the other and I would be hesitant to use it for high school learners unless they were very advanced.
Content wise, their study had some interesting points that grabbed my attention. First, they acknowledged previous studies that showed that systematic processing requires motivation. To define a problem, identify alternative solutions and then select the best choice requires a lot of work. You need to enjoy being engaged in thinking in order to be systematic about your political choices. Because of this the authors believe that when we have mixed feelings about something, ideologically based voting tends to increase. The current political climate seems to bear this out. Voters are getting polarized because of the lack of clear solutions makes it difficult to choose a good candidate, so instead voters are turning towards ideological choices.
I believe you can find the article here...although I have never posted something from ebscohost, so it may be blocked. Your welcome to let me know if the link works.
http://web.ebscohost.com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=2039bdc4-c196-4f28-b07d-179d65c7be56%40sessionmgr110&vid=4&hid=112
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Monday, September 5, 2011
Week 1 application
A blog is a simple, but effective way to create a professional learning community. Like any tool, a blog may not function to its full potential unless it is used properly. I have been teaching high school students for almost a decade, so my critiques focus on how these resources would work in a high school. Let’s look at three links that can offer more insight into blogging.
This YouTube clip provides a cute, but basic explanation of what a blog is. This clip serves best as an introduction to blogging to people who are not familiar with the concept at all. In a classroom where some learners may have previous knowledge and some may not, the clip would also serve as a way to create a common base of terms and knowledge. If you are planning to use blogs in a classroom it is important for your student learners to have a common frame of reference.
The edublog.org site is one example of the many different free blog services out there. Did I say free? Few things are truly free. To get full functionality you may need to upgrade to a paid subscription. The upgrades would be most beneficial to an instructor who needs complete access to student blogs, more customization options and storage in order to create a more immersive online learning experience. However, the free version would work just fine for students who need to create an online blog cheaply and quickly.
The company’s name suggests a close tie with education and they seem to have addressed concerns many schools have regarding online content. They claim access is only provided to educators and mentions the ability to block adult content. Without an extensive test of these claims I have no way of knowing how effective they are, but it may be a selling point to some that they are at least addressing some common issues.
As stated above to get advance features you need to pay and I would advise anyone hoping to make blogging a part of their day to day classroom to research carefully what each level free to pro to campus provides. The free version does seem to provide enough options to use in a classroom to introduce the basics of blogging to students.
My final example I am sharing is what I would call a true professional blog made by Ferdinand Krauss about e-learning and instructional technology. The author shares many different reflections and ideas regarding the subject and judging by the number of comments to some posts, there is a small group that follows and contributes to his discussions. I am not going to comment on the subject material, which would be the reader’s job, but instead on the overall set up of the blog.
The first thing I noticed is the clean interface. The background is simple and it is easy to tell where one discussion starts and ends. Having a clean interface is important, especially if you are hoping to have serious and substantive discussions. A web page that is crammed full of color pictures, advertisements and windows can become difficult to navigate and tiresome to view. The easy to find links are also a plus since often the author is referencing other work to support his own ideas or to provide further learning.
In a high school I would not necessarily choose this blog as an example of content since much of the information might be a little too difficult for high school learners, but it is an excellent example of how a scholarly or professional blog should look. This is an important lesson for younger potential bloggers to learn since much of their previous experience with media like this may be through sites like Facebook. Besides the clean interface I would point out to students that the author does not waste the reader’s time with status updates about what he is doing Friday night or had for lunch. This lesson serves to remind students that the online world has many facets beyond their social life. If you want your blog to be taken seriously professionally or academically your choice of content and interface needs to reflect that.
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