Consolidation: Learning, Students, Educators, Online
Learning is the acquisition of knowledge as well as the modes of organizing, questioning, making decisions, and exploring our own assumptions and constructions of reality. It takes place in events, and is not explicitly laid out along a path. It is a process, not a program. (McWhinney & Markos, 2003)
Students & Technology
Through research for this portfolio, I have repeatedly found that learning must be situated in context. According to Bransford, Brown & Cocking, learning begins with engagement of prior knowledge and preconceptions. “Initial understanding” must be engaged for learning to occur (i.e. by providing familiar examples and scaffolding). In other words, learning must happen in learner context. The requirement of awareness of prior knowledge echoes cognitive constructivist learning perspectives and transformative learning models, both of which want an awareness of personal belief and assumption because they serve as the lens through which learner views new information. These lenses must be identified, and the learner made aware, before they can be challenged. The transformative “disorienting dilemma” occurs when the information presented does not fit with initial understanding and prior knowledge, creating cause for re-examination and possibly, change.
In the traditional pedagogical approach, students are treated as passive participants in their education, but the definitions above suggest that learning is an active process. Students arrive in our classrooms with prior knowledge and preconceptions that must be addressed before real learning can occur. Once a factual knowledge base is established, students must lead their own learning experiences, while educators take on the role of facilitator to guide students toward discovering things for themselves.
Technology is a key aspect of this paradigm shift because it has the ability to empower and enable students to access to the information they need to achieve success. Technology also enables educators to better facilitate and guide student learning toward achievement of transformational learning to prepare students for a changing future. Awareness of different student learning “norms” like those of Tapscott’s Net Generation, can help educators and students to customize and enhance learning experiences to best fit their learning styles. Because they have vast amount of information at their fingertips, students need 21st century skills like critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, communication, and collaboration to scrutinize that information, and apply it to the changing world.
Ideally, students will eventually become L3 learners (McWhinney & Markos, 2003). At this level learners challenge their interpretations of experience, relationships, and systems leading to broad questions about the world. This type of learning allows one to hold and work with contradiction, leading to resolutions of contraries, and lies beyond reflection, observation, rote learning and its applications.
Technology is integrated into the lives of young people today, so much so that it has become a part of the way that they learn. In my Students and Technology artifacts I discovered that when creating learning environments and experiences for students, medium and the message must be student centered. Technology allows students the freedom and flexibility they require to feel comfortable, enables collaboration so their opinions are heard, and keeps pace with the speed they crave. Online learning and technology tools enable access to more information, more opportunities to collaborate, more real world problems and applications to which they can apply their understanding. This motivates students and encourages them to take ownership of their learning to produce people with the types of skills we will need in the future.
Educators and Technology
Educators are students too. Like students, adults need learning situated in a real world context. According to andragogy (Knowles, 1098), adults need to know how, why, and where their learning will be applicable immediately in their lives, and they must be connected to the learning process by motivation and previous experience.
As students bring preconceptions and previous understanding to learning, adults bring experience, and prior knowledge. These underlying assumptions must be brought to the attention of the learner, and questioned. Hughes (2005) distinguishes three types of prior knowledge that affect professional learning and technology use in education for teachers: Subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge. According to her study, Hughes (2005) recommends professional development that targets subject matter and pedagogical content knowledge, because teachers need to witness “explicit models of how student learning unfolds within particular content areas” (Martin, 2010). This mirrors the social context within which students construct knowledge, and the “many examples” located within subject matter required for Collaborative and Social Learning, and Bransford, Brown & Cocking’s (2000) How People Learn, respectively.
In the same way that motivated students with strong knowledge base can best approach critical and problem-solving based learning experiences, teachers with more professional knowledge and stronger knowledge bases can more readily develop tech-supported pedagogy (Hughes 2005). Again, collaborative content specific work groups are found to enhance and support effective technology use in the classroom (Hughes 2005), just as students constructing knowledge together can lead to “deeper” levels of learning.
Another way to approach both adult and student learning is to consider change models. The artifacts from my Technology Diffusion course were instrumental in showing me ways to understand learning as a change process. Technology implementation and pedagogical change must happen simultaneously for innovation to occur. The “unfreezing” process, the first step in Lewin’s change theory, requires that we “undo current mind set by presenting a problem to encourage people to recognize the need for change”. This prescription echoes that of cognitive constructivist learning perspectives, and the conclusions of Bransford, Brown & Cocking (2000), as mentioned above. Lewin’s transition phase reflects what I have labelled “Learning Process” on my consolidation concept map under which I include the “learning environment” and the various innovative student centered “educational approaches” outlined in this portfolio. By allowing discovery-type learning and meeting the needs to today’s learners, ownership of the new knowledge is crystalized, or according to Lewin, “refreeze” occurs.
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand” Confucius, 551 BC – 479 BC)
Online Learning
Online learning is one type of learning environment. Because of its growing popularity and my own interest, I have more closely examined this environment for my portfolio through my artifacts. Because I have already outlined the value in detail adult learning principles in online learning environments (Blondiy,2007), and the web affordances for learning lenses (Anderson, 2004) in my theme discussion, I will not do so again here. I will draw your attention to Anderson’s model of online learning interactions.
Students & Technology
Through research for this portfolio, I have repeatedly found that learning must be situated in context. According to Bransford, Brown & Cocking, learning begins with engagement of prior knowledge and preconceptions. “Initial understanding” must be engaged for learning to occur (i.e. by providing familiar examples and scaffolding). In other words, learning must happen in learner context. The requirement of awareness of prior knowledge echoes cognitive constructivist learning perspectives and transformative learning models, both of which want an awareness of personal belief and assumption because they serve as the lens through which learner views new information. These lenses must be identified, and the learner made aware, before they can be challenged. The transformative “disorienting dilemma” occurs when the information presented does not fit with initial understanding and prior knowledge, creating cause for re-examination and possibly, change.
In the traditional pedagogical approach, students are treated as passive participants in their education, but the definitions above suggest that learning is an active process. Students arrive in our classrooms with prior knowledge and preconceptions that must be addressed before real learning can occur. Once a factual knowledge base is established, students must lead their own learning experiences, while educators take on the role of facilitator to guide students toward discovering things for themselves.
Technology is a key aspect of this paradigm shift because it has the ability to empower and enable students to access to the information they need to achieve success. Technology also enables educators to better facilitate and guide student learning toward achievement of transformational learning to prepare students for a changing future. Awareness of different student learning “norms” like those of Tapscott’s Net Generation, can help educators and students to customize and enhance learning experiences to best fit their learning styles. Because they have vast amount of information at their fingertips, students need 21st century skills like critical thinking, creativity, problem solving, communication, and collaboration to scrutinize that information, and apply it to the changing world.
Ideally, students will eventually become L3 learners (McWhinney & Markos, 2003). At this level learners challenge their interpretations of experience, relationships, and systems leading to broad questions about the world. This type of learning allows one to hold and work with contradiction, leading to resolutions of contraries, and lies beyond reflection, observation, rote learning and its applications.
Technology is integrated into the lives of young people today, so much so that it has become a part of the way that they learn. In my Students and Technology artifacts I discovered that when creating learning environments and experiences for students, medium and the message must be student centered. Technology allows students the freedom and flexibility they require to feel comfortable, enables collaboration so their opinions are heard, and keeps pace with the speed they crave. Online learning and technology tools enable access to more information, more opportunities to collaborate, more real world problems and applications to which they can apply their understanding. This motivates students and encourages them to take ownership of their learning to produce people with the types of skills we will need in the future.
Educators and Technology
Educators are students too. Like students, adults need learning situated in a real world context. According to andragogy (Knowles, 1098), adults need to know how, why, and where their learning will be applicable immediately in their lives, and they must be connected to the learning process by motivation and previous experience.
As students bring preconceptions and previous understanding to learning, adults bring experience, and prior knowledge. These underlying assumptions must be brought to the attention of the learner, and questioned. Hughes (2005) distinguishes three types of prior knowledge that affect professional learning and technology use in education for teachers: Subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge. According to her study, Hughes (2005) recommends professional development that targets subject matter and pedagogical content knowledge, because teachers need to witness “explicit models of how student learning unfolds within particular content areas” (Martin, 2010). This mirrors the social context within which students construct knowledge, and the “many examples” located within subject matter required for Collaborative and Social Learning, and Bransford, Brown & Cocking’s (2000) How People Learn, respectively.
In the same way that motivated students with strong knowledge base can best approach critical and problem-solving based learning experiences, teachers with more professional knowledge and stronger knowledge bases can more readily develop tech-supported pedagogy (Hughes 2005). Again, collaborative content specific work groups are found to enhance and support effective technology use in the classroom (Hughes 2005), just as students constructing knowledge together can lead to “deeper” levels of learning.
Another way to approach both adult and student learning is to consider change models. The artifacts from my Technology Diffusion course were instrumental in showing me ways to understand learning as a change process. Technology implementation and pedagogical change must happen simultaneously for innovation to occur. The “unfreezing” process, the first step in Lewin’s change theory, requires that we “undo current mind set by presenting a problem to encourage people to recognize the need for change”. This prescription echoes that of cognitive constructivist learning perspectives, and the conclusions of Bransford, Brown & Cocking (2000), as mentioned above. Lewin’s transition phase reflects what I have labelled “Learning Process” on my consolidation concept map under which I include the “learning environment” and the various innovative student centered “educational approaches” outlined in this portfolio. By allowing discovery-type learning and meeting the needs to today’s learners, ownership of the new knowledge is crystalized, or according to Lewin, “refreeze” occurs.
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand” Confucius, 551 BC – 479 BC)
Online Learning
Online learning is one type of learning environment. Because of its growing popularity and my own interest, I have more closely examined this environment for my portfolio through my artifacts. Because I have already outlined the value in detail adult learning principles in online learning environments (Blondiy,2007), and the web affordances for learning lenses (Anderson, 2004) in my theme discussion, I will not do so again here. I will draw your attention to Anderson’s model of online learning interactions.
Online learning is capable of mimicking the pedagogy of the traditional face-to-face classroom. As I have learned throughout this master’s program, the assumption that this is the best model for online learning, or learning in general, must be challenged in the same way traditional pedagogical teacher-knows-all models have been. I view Anderson’s model as a starting point for this discussion. It is clear from this model that an interactive system of collaboration and interaction is possible online. Because students can interact with content, other students, communities, and teachers simultaneously, in a combination of individual and collaborative, paced or self-paced tasks, this environment potentially offers something that in-person learning does not.
The online learning environment is so vast and varied that participants must exist in a space that is thick with contradiction of opinion, fact, model etc. The learner must constantly evaluate his encounters and revise his knowledge base. Online learning affords students access to a multitude of opinions and information, cultures, and perspectives they may not have encountered without it. Besides that, all this information exists online in the imagined place we call “the internet”. As per the SAMR model, the concept of information existing online is, in itself, a redefinition of previous understandings of knowledge. Already the affordances of the web have brought learning to a new level, and it will only continue to do so. In the very least, the type of online learning described in my portfolio requires Level 2 learning, which is an event of change, a response to reflection, and a moment of instability that provides an opportunity to take a new path. Learners question data and assumptions, adopt new constructions of reality, and change worldviews.(McWhinney & Markos, 2003). This is a good progression from rote textbook learning that transmits information without examination.
Educational approaches like SSL, PBL, collaboration, and constructivism have already been redefined by their use in online learning communities. The nature of communication has permanently been augmented by the existence of the internet and its tools. I believe online learning will continue to gain popularity, but also become ever more transformative. Technology tools aid teachers in provide transformative learning opportunities for students by innovative or transformative use in teaching practice. Moving the entire experience online does not hinder the learning experience, but rather redefines it and creates something impossible in a brick-and-mortar classroom.
Conclusion
To conclude, I will borrow from my Leadership Plan:
Technology supports learning by supporting “deeper” levels of learning, in a variety of ways. Technology is a vehicle for communication, collaboration, a tool for differentiation and organization, and a way to store knowledge. Technology can help learners questions assumptions, create new world-views, and become innovators. With the help of technology, learners can reach “previously inconceivable” heights, and thus prepare them for an unknown and rapidly changing future.
The online learning environment is so vast and varied that participants must exist in a space that is thick with contradiction of opinion, fact, model etc. The learner must constantly evaluate his encounters and revise his knowledge base. Online learning affords students access to a multitude of opinions and information, cultures, and perspectives they may not have encountered without it. Besides that, all this information exists online in the imagined place we call “the internet”. As per the SAMR model, the concept of information existing online is, in itself, a redefinition of previous understandings of knowledge. Already the affordances of the web have brought learning to a new level, and it will only continue to do so. In the very least, the type of online learning described in my portfolio requires Level 2 learning, which is an event of change, a response to reflection, and a moment of instability that provides an opportunity to take a new path. Learners question data and assumptions, adopt new constructions of reality, and change worldviews.(McWhinney & Markos, 2003). This is a good progression from rote textbook learning that transmits information without examination.
Educational approaches like SSL, PBL, collaboration, and constructivism have already been redefined by their use in online learning communities. The nature of communication has permanently been augmented by the existence of the internet and its tools. I believe online learning will continue to gain popularity, but also become ever more transformative. Technology tools aid teachers in provide transformative learning opportunities for students by innovative or transformative use in teaching practice. Moving the entire experience online does not hinder the learning experience, but rather redefines it and creates something impossible in a brick-and-mortar classroom.
Conclusion
To conclude, I will borrow from my Leadership Plan:
Technology supports learning by supporting “deeper” levels of learning, in a variety of ways. Technology is a vehicle for communication, collaboration, a tool for differentiation and organization, and a way to store knowledge. Technology can help learners questions assumptions, create new world-views, and become innovators. With the help of technology, learners can reach “previously inconceivable” heights, and thus prepare them for an unknown and rapidly changing future.