""We can finally say that you are not the sum of a letter grade, that your report card should not dictate where you will go and what you should do with your life." Jeremy Friedberg of Spongelab interactive talks about blended learning and creating a personalized learning experience with help of technology and gaming. Games are the most popular form of entertainment and through participation they are an incredibly powerful data capturing tool. By knowing so much more about a learner and the help of collaboration we can revolutionize the way we deliver education and foster creativity in students."
"Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward."
The TED talk further distinguish tasks into two types, and reveals that incentives doesn't work with the type of work requires cognitive skills. It points out that intrinsic motivation: autonomy, mastery and purpose will work better to enhance efficiency. The situations in my classroom clearly backup this statement. Every time when I am doing simple translation word to word with my students in a timed situation, incentive such as candies, points work perfectly. Students performed well under that simply reward system. But when the task change into creating sentences with the given vocabulary, students' attentions shift from getting rewards to proving their ability or mastery.
As a language teacher, I understand that as the difficult of the content increase, the effect of rewards decrease accordingly. To increase students' intrinsic motivation, cultivate self-motivated students is the key to success.
" History of Illinois lesson plan: Go through the Kinesthetic Lectures to learn & discuss the movements. Why we need to get students up and moving http://lodgemccammon.com/kinesthetics/research/ "
One thing that stuck with me throughout this video is to make sure as an educator you know how to get the attention of a student's brain and keep it. Another thing about brain based learning that intrigued me was that you need not get the kids to care or to "buy in" what you are teaching. If they do not buy into what you are doing they won't learn.
The video talks about It delves into a more indepth questions, when simple motivation rewards and punishment doesn't work, what should we do to improve motivation. The real motivation is to create a "self positive image", a great identity.
I came across this online magazine that covers eLearning while looking for information about YouTube as a learning tool. I think it's a good general resource about eLearning and is probably geared more towards the adult/corporate training side of Learning Technologies as opposed to the K-12 education side but could be used either way. I believe it fits well under the Social Cognitive Theory but each individual article may reach into other theories.
"The belief in learning styles is so widespread, it is considered to be common sense. Few people ever challenge this belief, which has been deeply ingrained in our educational system. Teachers are routinely told that in order to be effective educators, they must identify & cater to individual students' learning styles; it is estimated that around 90% of students believe that they have a specific learning style but research suggests that learning styles don't actually exist! This presentation focuses on debunking this myth via research findings, explaining how/why the belief in learning styles is problematic, and examining the reasons why the belief persists despite the lack of evidence."
Found another video on brain based learning. This video is almost 15 minutes long. This video is about Learning about the brain changes everything by David Rock at TEDxTokyo.
I found the comments on how we get emotions wrong very interesting. The idea that emotions effect intelligence and memory. How should I as an instructor use that information to provide learning experience to my students?
Glynda Lee Hoffman mentioned the importance of the brain development in children's visual, auditory and motor processing. What I consonant the most with her work as a classroom teacher is that teacher might not able to understand the underlying reason for students' struggling. If we as a teacher could better understand the reason, we might be able to provide more personalized teaching to cater for students' need.