Group items tagged

I am curious about what you think on this. Do you agree?

While reading I felt that the author is somewhat close to new ideas coming from other people, other thinkers, actually coming from the rest of the world. I mean as I understood at some parts, he is not open to accept the judgements or theories of some thinkers because what they said were already out there, they did not bring anything new. However I would name these people as men of action and thinkers ahead of their time. Because they draw attention to critical points that were ignored or missed by others. Maybe yes what they put forth were already out there or maybe some of their methods are not sufficient compared to our current methodologies but still they were the ones to see the complete picture and summarize things.

Thank you Evrim Hocam:) I strongly believe in community, wikinomy, we have to share, we can learn from each other in an informal environment but social constructivism is not working on me:) As he wrote "At University I learned almost everything in the quiet of my own room and the library. In corporate life, I relished the opportunity to learn on trains and planes, havens of forced isolation, peace and quiet. To this day I blog a lot and enjoy periods of intense research, reading and writing. It's not that I've learned everything in these contexts, only that they go against the idea that all learning needs to be social." I always got successful with deliberate practice and with "Learning by Doing". I don't like social media as well, there are many damages than benefits and I'm not so introvert, maybe a little:) but it's not about being introvert or extrovert, it's about talking or doing... I want to tell a real story of my friend who was a novice programmer in a company. There were many experts, novices and they were taking courses, online, offline, with collaboration every time. Everybody were sharing, commenting, discussing but he began a real life project first week by himself and after 6 month they were still asking to each other but he finished his project. After one year he was the best programmer in the company. And everyone began to ask to him. I asked him, he told that he believes in working until suffering and just doing:) And he added this interesting sentence "You will learn and you will be successful when you will be so related, so suffering that one day you will see dreams and solve problems about the topics in your sleep" My friend's opinions are maybe a little bit dramatic but I believe in "doing" too, at least it's working for us:)

Theories, Models, and Frameworks of Learning for Educational Research and Practice. This knowledge base features learning theories, models, and frameworks that address how people learn. Each one is summarized and discussed in an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand format. This site is useful for students and scholars of various fields, including educational psychology, instructional design, digital media and learning, and more.

Here is a website telling about communities of practice, situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation. You can check for an overview about situated learning.

"Many of the ways we have of talking about learning and education are based on the assumption that learning is something that individuals do". This is a really nice article that outlines the theory and its applications and some issues related to situated learning theory are pointed out.

What is the Situated Learning Theory? Situated learning, simply put, is learning that takes place in the same context in which it is applied. It was first proposed by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger as a model of learning in among group of people who share a craft and/or a profession, i.e., a community of practice.The basic tenet of the theory is that abstract knowledge usually given in the classroom is harder to retain.

"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." ― Benjamin Franklin In the area of adult learning, Ben Franklin turns out to be quite prescient.

That's true. Education is a social-emotional act. As I said in my personal learning theory, teaching humans is not like inserting lines of codes to series of robots to make them behave in a specific way. We all have emotions and our emotions to a specific event may not be same all the time as our point of views to an event are affected by our personal experiences, culture, philosophy, etc. In that sense, for a teacher, it is important to monitor students' feelings to a specific topic and to arrange learning environments in which students have positive feelings about a topic.

"Introduce failure into your learning design." something we appreciate less in our educational system.

The video is generally about what is situated learning theory, how it is occurred, what is the Community of Practice and its structural elements. In the video, it is explained that Lave and Wenger observed different populations that learning takes place in social situations with other people thus the situated learning theory was born.

This is a nice little newsletter that mentions some characteristics of situated learning. Some resources on situated learning and its usage in learning environments are offered !

Firstly, it was a nice source to read, thanks for sharing it. I agree with you time concerns, teacher and student charateristics are prominent to implement the principles of situated learning in practice. It is really difficult to create authentic learning environment in our classes under the stess of keeping up with the curriculum which is based on traditional theories of learning. Thus, it is the work of the curriculum specialists to revise the curricula to be more in line with the improvements in the field of learning sciences.

There is a case study which I really advise you to look at it. It is about a political course in which they took a government's problem about content and design of websites. He says "given all the considerations at work in municipal government, the students will decide how the power of the web can best be brought to bear on making government work better."

Adopting a design-based research methodology, this study used digital video technology to support reflective tasks for language learning in multimedia environments. The emphasis was on the improvement of oral communication skills. The reflective tasks used in this study were exposed to iterative design process and the whole research process was driven by two underlying learning theories. This iterative and theory driven design reflects the nature of DBR well.

Is there ant iteration in the design here? Or is it the implementation of three different courses?

Hocam, students' reflective practice happened in different formats each year. To be more specific, task-completion tools and task-completion formats were exposed to an iterative design. Each year a different tool and a format were implemented and the reflection by the students progressed in an iterative way though it was conducted with different classes. For example, in 2006, students of Class 1 reviewed their presentations in a multimedia player and reflected on it via a word-processing program. In 2008, YouTube was used for their presentations and they had a collaborative reflective task after being paired with each other. So, a different design was applied for each year but in an iterative fashion.

I have seen this post when I was searching for how can interaction with peers contribute to learning maths. It is written by ROBERT SUN who is the CEO of Suntex International and inventor of First In Math, an online program designed for deep practice in mathematics. The things that are mentioned felt very similar with our country's situation actually, as learners how do we use concepts of maths (or any other courses) except from school? May be the first reason for our students cannot learn and hate maths is behind this question.

"Teachers can encourage their students to express themselves verbally using mathematical terms; even in the early grades, children can be asked to explain what they want or mean using numbers, or relationships between numbers. Anything that encourages them to talk about math and mathematical concepts is beneficial." Social math!. It looks like article emphasizes the importance of language in information exchange. It reminds me Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory in which he also believed that language is important for learning. He also purported that language is culture-dependent so each cultures' learning may be different from each other. In addition, providing opportunity to students to express themselves verbally can give us clues about current mental maps of students as to a specific topic (what is correct, what needs improvement, etc.). In addition, students can transfer their transformed ideas (ideas transformed from scholarly language to level-appropriate language) to their friends which can facilitate their learning.

Yasin, I am curious to hear about some of the contemporary approaches towards teaching Math, a subject generally taught with more traditional methods. Regarding mathphobia, we also need to think about the culture that stimulates that.

the page briefly and clearly defines what situated learning is, and shows how to create authentic learning contexts by using digital media. There are very short videos showing situated learning genres and some handouts which can be helpful in the class.

While I was reading about interactive case scenarios, I remembered some of my friends playing a game on the Internet called "fantasy role play". I am sure most of us have already heard about it because it is very popular among METU students. Actually the major aim of the game is to have some fun, but it can also be organized as a learning tool.

Thanks for sharing the examples. I already started thinking about how to integrate these into teacher training programs.

I liked Table1 - Design-based research variants and methods and Table-2 Characteristics of design-based research. Thanks.

"Design-based research and TELE (Technology-enhanced learning environments) designs are reciprocal and, thus, need to be interdependent. In order to stimulate contextually-sensitive practices of learning and instruction in the design and implementation of TELEs, practical, detailed, and contextual advice is necessary. Design-based research, as a pragmatic methodology, can guide TELE designers while generating practical knowledge to be shared among a broad design community. Conversely, TELE design theories, models, and procedures need to ensure that design-based research methodologies can be made operational, formalized, and systematized."

"The purpose of the Discovery Retreat is to promote environmentalism through the practice of contextual teaching and learning among teachers and their sutdents. It is our practical and philosophic belief that teachers can play an important role in the preservatin of our environment." "The Discovery Retreat is a program within the Department of Workforce Education, Leadership, and Social Foundations, which ranked 4th in the nation by the U.S. News and World Report. The Department of Workforce Education, Leadership, and Social Foundations is also recognized nationally and internationally for its work in the development of contextual teaching and learning theories and practices in teacher education."

there is much more to learn when you are outside than when you are inside :)

Dr. Darren Kruisselbrink teaches collage students motor development and perceptual motor development by observing and interacting with babies and pre-elementary children. He changes the way he teaches after seeing slides and lectures bore his class and lead no learning. He then looks for ways to link theory with practice and comes up with in-class baby observation and a community service which enables kids to play, parents to relax, university to bond with community, students to learn and observe motor development of pre-elementary children. This is one of the best authentic activity I've ever seen and similarly with Lave's thoughts his class contains community service, group work, and learning by doing. Kruisselbrink says this kind of teaching makes students thirsty for knowledge, creates lots of questions and curiosity, higher participation, and deeper learning.

The article seeks to establish the usefulness of situated learning theory as a means of thinking differently about the alleged abstraction of school learning in a range of subjects including physical education, and the issue of transfer of learning. Following a discussion of Lave and Wenger's notion of situated learning as legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice, the article explores the potential of Siedentop's sport education model as a means of providing young people with educative and authentic experiences of sport as legitimate peripheral participants. It is concluded that sport education may have the potential to provide educative and authentic experiences of sport.

The paper explains Learning by Design based on the guidelines case-based reasoning and problem-based learning with many implications to pedagogical tools and practices.

The link is to an interview with Etienne Wenger, who is an educational theorist and practitioner, best known for his formulation (with Jean Lave) of the theory of situated cognition and his more recent work in the field of communities of practice. There are various questions in the interview and can help us understand in detail.