Group items tagged

I've watched the video twice and in the end I've felt some concerns about the results of the studies. In the "how people learn" part, researchers were testing the storage and connection system of the brain through some high-tech tools. However, does neuropsychology provide enough evidence on the functioning of the brains? Can we generalize the results to all people from all cultures? I am not the one who is against neuropsychology, but for me one discipline may not give an appropriate answer to such a deep question. My second concern is about the integration of computer programs into the curriculum as a major learning tool. We see a program where "Betty" is speaking and giving feedback on the video. The program seems user friendly, but what about the negative aspects and limitations of the integration of technology into learning? Ok, I agree that we have to adapt to the rapid technological changes in the society. However, is technology the key to all learning processes? Plus, the program is designed on the mapping of the concepts. Does concept mapping make a curriculum compelling all the time? I am not sure about all characteristics of the program, but if it hasn't been designed in a challenging style and if all students come up with the same products, then how will they develop their knowledge and reasoning abilities? I couldn't find an answer to that. As for the part "effective teaching", I am in the same opinion with the researchers that there should be a connection between the real world and the subject taught. Moreover, I think the integration of the disciplines is difficult but a very good way of giving meaning to life. Besides, in the video we see teachers as a guide, as a facilitator and there is no doubt that providing individual support to the students helps students feel more involved.

Firstly, even if it is designed by utilizing modern technology and different understanding, which makes it a more developed and complicated one, the program used in the video reminded me the teaching machines of old times. It gives the priority to the cognitive aspect of learning. This seems to be a one-dimensional approach which underestimates the social aspect of learning. I think the value of classroom interaction for effective learning cannot be replaced by any kind of computer programs. Research on brain is really important and it provides very useful insights for learning and instructional activities. However, it should be supported by the findings of research by social psychologists as well. The very same individual may perform at varying levels when he is taught with the same methods in different environments. I personally experienced many times that even the absence of one individual in my classes affected the teaching an learning processes in a negative or positive way depending upon the classroom dinamics.

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:)

1. The purpose of this paper is to share reflections of the three authors on the process of instructional design and implementation of blended learning for teachers' professional development (PD) in rural western Kenya. 2. There are for different reserach questions but one of them is caught my attention as we have the same problem in our country I think; How appropriate is blended learning for teachers in a rural setting? 3. The design-based research methodology in the study comprised a number of research methods. The methods included ethnographic observations, qualitative interviews, narratives and documentation of design artifacts

I found his video highly interesting in that it begins with a thrilling question "when does learning start?" , it talks about the research that shows how much we learn in the womb -- from the lilt of our native language to our soon-to-be-favorite foods.

Language acquisition process of babies is a real miracle.They are born with certain tendencies towards their mother language which is an indicator that they strart language learning before birth as mentioned in the video recording. Moreover, they acquire their native language in an incredible speed without any special training. Thus, this video reminded me a major debate in understanding language acquisition: Is language an innate or learned abilitiy?

I agree that such research can be influential in discussing precautions or alternative perspectives for pregnant women and also for all involved in the study of learning. About the language acquisition, the very interesting question you raised has a long history of debate as you already mentioned. Maybe additional research in the future will help to put more light on the issue.

The video is very funny and it shows the importance of interest, motivation, self-esteem as well as prior knowledge in learning to me, what do you think?

Thank you for sharing this. Sheldon typically may have aimed to transfer what is written in the books or most probably imitated his teachers as this was the way he was instructed. I say so as the physics teacher at the high school I studied was instructing in the same way and this is why I could not learn physics and developed a kind of prejudice towards that subject matter. As I could not comprehend the abstract terms he was talking about I quitted:(

I think we usually experience such a thing. Teachers want to teach whatever they want without stopping, but they sometimes forget that not every students is very interested in the stuff :( an important thing to keep in mind.

LD is frequently mistaken as laziness or associated with disorders of emotion and behavior.

In my undergraduate education, I had chance to be involved in a project on the learning disability; dyslexia, problems of sounds and words. We gathered data from children in various elementary school children in Istanbul. This was a fruitful experience to learn on the topic learning disabilities.

I wanted to share a topic on learning disabilities as I have encountered such students studying at the college I work for and did not know what to do with them. When I tried to involve parents to acknowledge them they preferred blaming the education system or the school itself. It must be very difficult for a parent to accept it but as teachers we need to be more knowledgeable about what to do and how to deal with it to save these learners with learning disabilities from exclusion and failure.

Based on Reeves' design-based research model, this study did the research following 6 stages. In stage 1, a needs analysis was conducted with K-12 teachers in four 2-hour workshops in which teachers created WebQuests. Researchers came up with some design principles. In the second stage, based on needs analysis and literature review, a prototype Electronic Performance Support System (EPSS) was developed. In the following phase, the prototype EPSS was tested and evaluated as well as continuing needs analysis and refining design principles. In stage 4, the web-based EPSS prototype was developed through expert evaluation and some modifications were made. Stage 5 was characterized with continuous evaluation and testing with the practitioners in a similar workshop. Like in the first stage, data was collected through interviews, questionnaires, filed notes etc. Deriving from the findings gathered in stage 5, the design principles were developed and refined. As seen in the example, practitioners were involved in the process, both qualitative and quantitative data collection tools were utilized and EPSS was jointly developed by continuous evaluation and testing. I think the example is quite good to understand DBR.

While I was reading DBR, ''Forum theatre'' always came to my mind whether they resemble or not.After a quick search, i found that study.It is DBR.''It is understood as developing, testing,investigating, and refining learning environment designs and theoretical constructs, such as the pedagogical models that support learning and illustrate and predict how learning occurs.'' The data were collected through questionnaires.They used TML model(Teaching meaningful learning,you can see the table of it)According to the students, the video-supported forum-theater promoted most clearly the collaborative, co-operational,and conversational characteristics of meaningful learning.More,results suggest many refinements for Drama courses.

Recent findings in Cognitive Neuroscience are likely to have important implications for educational theory and practice.It is critical to determine whether these research findings sufficient,in and of themselves, to have a veridical impact on curriculum and policy.The ways in which neuroscience research will impact the field of education is discussed and Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences is examined as a case study of the impact of neuroscience on educational practice. It is concluded that experts who are well versed in both neuroscience and educational research and theory are needed and that the development of an indepe ndent discipline, Educational Neuroscience, will best bridge the gap between the two fields.

The reserach focuses on the relationship between individual needs(with disability) and product functions. To fill the gap and develop physical concepts, it presents some product designs. The research builds on general functions based on product design methods, formal human activity classification and ICF(It provides a systematic organizing scheme and coding rules for human functional ability and limitation) and data mining.Then they explore the applicability of a data mining technique, specifically association rule mining, as embodied in the Apriori algorithm to create knowledge in the form of quantitatively characterized heuristics for universal design.

This is an article by Chris Dede (Harvard Graduate School of Education August, 2004). It focuses on the importance and difficulties of DBR. You can get help from this article, while trying to answer the questions on LMS.

There was a case in one of the articles, the researchers were asked to provide an example of their research findings which helped them to solve a problem in practice and they were silent. It is a really good example of the gap between research and practice.When I think that research findings will not help to solve problems in the field, I start to question the things I am doing because being a part of the solution, not the problem" was the starting point of my academic life...

I really like the idea offered by DBR that is against the highly controlled laboratory settings are settings that research settings resembling that. But I still can not grasp how multi number of variables can healthly or in a valid sense can be studied all together in DBR. Maybe the local issue gains importance at this point.

this is a basic literature review article on design based research studies.

This is very good. We will cover some aspects from this article in class.

Lee S. Shulman is an educational psychologist having notable contributions to the study of teaching, assessment of teaching, learning, science and mathematics. He is a retired professor from Stanford Graduate School of Education, past president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, past president of the American Educational Research Association. Shulman is best known for popularizing the phrase "pedagogical content knowledge" (PCK). Shulman claimed that the emphases on teachers' subject knowledge and pedagogy were being treated as mutually exclusive. He thought that teacher education programs should combine these knowledge fields.

http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/elibrary/taking-learning-seriously This is an article by Shulman: "Taking Learning Seriously". He raises five questions about learning and answers them.

David Perkins has conducted long-term programs of research and development in the areas of teaching and learning for understanding, creativity, problem-solving and reasoning in the arts, sciences, and everyday life. He has also studied the role of educational technologies in teaching and learning and has designed learning structures and strategies in organizations to facilitate personal and organizational understanding and intelligence. His inquiries reflect a conception of mind that emphasizes the interlocking relationships among thinking, learning, and understanding. The three depend deeply on one another. Meaningful learning aims at understanding and depends on thinking with and about what one is learning. Effective thinking in the subject matters and in general involves understanding the resources of the mind and learning to deploy them sensitively and systematically

Allan Collins is a retired professor of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University and best known in psychology for his work on semantic memory and plausible reasoning, in artificial intelligence for his work on reasoning and intelligent tutoring systems, and in education for his work on situated learning, inquiry teaching, epistemic forms and games, design research, and cognitive apprenticeship. His famous work with the co-author Richard Halverson is "Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America" that was published in 2009. I have put the link to download the article presenting a summary of the contents of the book written by Collins and Halverson.

Here is a list of his publications and books: http://allancollins.northwestern.edu/pubs-more.html http://allancollins.northwestern.edu/books.html

Yelda, I am really happy to meet such a study and really curious about reading this paper. As you know, I am interested in technology in education. Therefore, it will be my basic reading. Thanks for your sharing.

A study about two major pitfalls impeding achievement of the desired social interaction in CSCL environments which are defined as; taking social interaction in groups for granted and the lack of attention paid to the social psychological dimension of social interaction outside of the task context

In this study, they compared CSCL based instructions and pen and paper methodologies in Mathematics education to enhance Student learning.

This is a research on the effect of technology and collaborative style on learning. This is another discussion topic we wil cover in the classroom. This effect paradigm reveal many inconsistencies that make it difficult to draw generalizations.

This is an example of learning on an Island of Expertise. For example: A child is interested in dinosaur. The parents maybe make some activities which build an island of expertise. Activities could be a visit in a museum or a movie about the topic.

Similar projects can be done at schools about the animals or things around us (like visiting a dog barn or visiting a factory). Such visits may help students get motivated about the world around them.