Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

            When students work collaboratively in an environment that fosters cooperative learning in order to build an artifact, they are engaging in the social learning process (Laureate Education, 2010a).  The advancement and creation of new technologies should be making it easier for teachers to implement this theory within their classroom.  The challenge, however, for some of us, is not having enough of the needed technology to implement the social learning theory to its full potential in regards to 21st Century Skills.  When the needed technology is present, this theory allows the teachers to transform their classroom environment to a student centered learning environment in which the students take on the responsibility for their learning in such a manner that allows them to constantly interact with other students either in groups or by using programs online that allow for a social interaction amongst peers.  While this collaborative, student-led style of learning is taking place, the teacher is left to facilitate the learning of the students ensuring that they stay on track within their learning plan.

            One instructional strategy that I have recently discovered that correlates with the principles of social learning is a website called Schoology.  Schoology is essentially FaceBook for education.  It is a website that allows for social interaction amongst students and teachers coupled with learning management for teachers that allow them to share academic content with their students.   Through my Schoology class pages, my fifth grade students have been able to share content with each other, pose questions for items that they might not understand, and have those questions answered by other students.  This website has allowed me to create a controlled social platform for my students to participate that can be used to first introduce them to social networking, and then to educate these students as to how to properly interact with each other in this type of environment.

            VoiceThread is another instructional strategy that allows for collaboration between students in a cooperative learning environment.  This website allows students to create an online photo album where you are able to upload different images in order to tell a story.  Once a file is created on VoiceThread, students, or the public domain, will be able to leave their own comments about the document that was created.  This website will give students complete freedom in regards to telling their story, thus allowing teachers an even greater insight into the minds of their students and just what each student is thinking during this creative process (Laureate Education, 2010b).  This student will also increase the enthusiasm within your students since they will be creating an artifact completely on their own and based on how they want it to look.

            The constant innovation and creation of new technologies within today's society is causing a fundamental shift to environments that value collaboration and cooperative learning while utilizing the new technological tools that we now have.  It is up to teachers to incorporate these student-led cooperative learning environments within their lessons.  Doing so will generate a greater enthusiasm and interest from students, but will also help students master the needed 21st Century Skills that will have them prepared for the workforce that awaits them.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010a). Program eight. Social learning theories [Webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010b). Program ten. Spotlight on technology: VoiceThread [Webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore, MD: Author.

www.schoology.com

http://voicethread.com/

Constructivism in Practice

Constructivism in Practice

Constructionism can be described as a theory that states students learn best when they are building on something that can share with others, specifically an external artifact (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010).  When building their own artifact, students tend to be more engaged in the learning process.  This theory also allows students to take responsibility and have some control in their own learning.  By having students become active participants within their own learning, they are more likely to have a higher interest level creating a larger base of knowledge within each student.

One instructional strategy that can be utilized with the constructivist approach is generating and testing hypotheses.  This strategy allows students to perform complex tasks while applying learned content knowledge and vocabulary, all the while they are creating a better understanding of a specific content area (Pitler, Hubbell, & Malenoski, 2007).  The generating and testing hypotheses can be broken down into several different tasks with one of these tasks being invention.  For years, I have had my students take part in an 'Invention Convention'.  For this project, students were required to create their own invention that solved a problem or helped make the earth a better place.  Students had to first generate an idea as to what their invention was going to be and exactly what problem it was going to solve.  Once students decided on their invention, they then had to construct a hypothesis that could be tested with their invention.  After planning on how they were going to build their invention and sketching out the 'blueprints' for it, students then went about creating their invention in order to test their hypothesis.  Students had to then analyze the results of their testing and then decide whether or not they wanted to alter their invention based on their test results.  This project allowed students to not only create an artifact, their invention, but also gave students the freedom to generate and test their own hypothesis as to what problem their invention was designed to solve.

Project based learning is a strategy that allows students to work collaboratively at length on a project that results in the creation of an artifact (Orey, 2010).  Utilizing the project based learning strategy will allow students to choose their own activities, conduct their own research, and then perform their own analysis of the information in order to create a meaningful project (Orey, 2010).  I will be implementing this approach once testing has been completed this spring, when I have my students create their own wiki page that outlines the three branches of government, their jobs, and how the system of checks and balances.  For this project, students will be working in small groups and be responsible for their own learning on this topic.  I will provide each groups with a set of guidelines as to what their page must consist of, however, they will be responsible for researching and analyzing the information that they find on their own.  This project will create an environment that is student-centered while having an end result of each group creating their own artifact that illustrates how our government works.

The constructionist theory is a theory that teachers need to incorporate into their classrooms.  This theory places an emphasis on creating a meaningful artifact through a learning environment that places the students in charge.  By utilizing this theory, teachers will be allowing their students to take an active role in their own learning process while placing the responsibility of learning on the students while the teacher facilitates this type of learning environment.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Program seven. Constructionist and constructivist learning theories [Webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Orey, M., 2010.  Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology.  Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Behaviorism

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Cognitivism in Practice

Cognitive learning is an information processing model that allows students to use multiple senses during presentations or activities to help enhance their learning (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010).  The goal of cognitive learning theories is to help a student commit information to their long-term memory through the process of rehearsal, or practice.  There are many different strategies that can be incorporated to assist with this skill, including cues, questions, and graphic organizers, summarizing and note taking, concept mapping, and virtual field trips.

Cues, questions, and graphic organizers help students focus in on improving their ability to retrieve, use, and organize any information that is needed for a topic (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007).  Cues, which I use extensively within my classroom in order to get my students attention when we are covering a particular area that they need to know and understand, are hints or specific reminders about what students need to learn (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007).  Questions, which I also utilize quite frequently to review concepts learned on the previous day, also have a tendency to trigger certain aspects of students' memories.  Graphic organizers help students by allowing them to organize their thoughts or ideas related to a specific subject so that they will be able to better break the material down or to help them understand the material better prior to covering the topic (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007).

Summarizing and note taking are two skills that allow students to take large quantities of information and then break it down into smaller more manageable chunks while not omitting any of the important pieces (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007).  Note taking is a skill that I rarely use with my fifth grade students.  I have learned that my students have a tendency to learn more not by writing things down, but by seeing pictures and videos of the content instead.  My students tend to score better when they have an actual mental image to relate to when trying to recall needed information.  Summarizing is a skill that we work on in fifth grade.  Not in the sense of note-taking, but more so in a sense of reading a passage and then being able to summarize the information that is in the passage or other required reading.

Concept mapping and virtual field trips are two other effective instructional strategies when it comes to allowing your students to visually remember or recall necessary information.  Concept mapping is just what it sounds like, a map.  This style of map, however, allows students the opportunity to see the break-down and relations between subgroups of information.  Virtual field trips, on the other, hand are basically a 'field trip' to a far away place or maybe even a trip into the past.  When using virtual field trips, students are able to see pictures or, in some cases, have a guide lead them around a historic site, go on safari in Africa, or even go back in time to experience an event that has already occurred.  Personally, I feel that virtual field trips are an outstanding way of allowing students to 'experience' different places for themselves.

Teachers have many different instructional strategies at their disposal to help enhance the learning environment of their students.  Just which instructional strategies a teacher plans to implement is up to them.  However, I have discovered, at least in my classroom, that the more visual the instructional strategy is, the more information my students will retain.  Knowing this, I try to include as many 'visuals' as possible into my lessons so my students have a specific image that they can recall when they are trying to remember specific facts about information that we have covered.


Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Program five. Cognitive learning theory [Webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Behaviorism in Practice

            No matter if we are willing to admit it or not, all teachers utilize some sort of behaviorist learning theory within their classroom.  Most of the these behaviorist theories employed by teachers are done in an attempt to influence their students behavior in such a way that will create a welcoming and effective learning environment.  In order to establish this conducive learning environment, teachers will utilize a form of operant conditioning in which they reinforce the desirable behaviors of their students, while punishing the undesirable ones as well (Laureate Education, Inc., 2010).  Besides reinforcing the actual behavior that students exhibit during class, teachers should also include instructional strategies that reinforces the desired behavior shown by their students.  Two of these instructional strategies that I value within my classroom are reinforcing effort and studying (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007).

            I teach fifth grade students, and one of the things I stress with them is the development of their work ethic.  Since the work load increases greatly from the fourth to fifth grade in my school district, I feel that developing a good work ethic is vital to for the success of my students as they get older.  Reinforcing their effort is an instructional strategy that I employ in order to place a positive emphasis on the need for developing a good work ethic.  Besides praise, and the occasional reward, I also reinforce the need for a good work ethic through the 'Quote of the Week' that we do.  Each Monday, we will spend a few minutes discussing a different quote.  These quotes usually deal with the importance of making the right choices in life, developing a good character, and stress the importance of working hard in order to achieve whatever goals that you set.  I feel that this kind of reinforcement is important at this age in order to help these students develop a good character.

            Another way I am able to utilize reinforce the effort of my students is through the use of our 'CPS', or 'clicker' system.   Our CPS system is basically a remote answering system that allows my students to 'click' in their answers to multiple choice questions.  By having this kind of technology within my classroom, I am able to perform assessments at any point during my instruction in order to get an idea as to whether or not my students are understanding the lesson.  Since this system allows me to see their answers instantly, I am able to reinforce their effort by providing students with immediate feedback based on their results.  The students also respond well to the instant reinforcement that they receive when the results  for each question are posted.  They cheer each other on when they score well, and show disappointment when they struggle on a concept as well.  While the cheering offers positive reinforcement to the desired behavior of getting the question correct, the disappointment is equally as effective.  When the students do not score well on a question, they are motivated to relearn that particular topic in order to improve their score the next time we do the assessment.

            The second instructional strategy that I emphasize in my classroom is studying, or the process of developing good study skills.  The two subject areas that I teach are science and social studies.  I tend not to give homework to my students since they normally have math and reading / language arts homework each night.  By not giving much homework to my students, tests become very important in determining the grade for each of my students.  For this reason, it becomes vital for my students to develop good study skills.  Since it can be difficult to check whether or not my students have actually studied and increased their mastery of the current content, I rely on short cycle assessments in order to evaluate my students progress and study skills.  While these types of assessments may not offer my students repetitive practice like homework does, they do allow me to measure the progress of my students while giving my students additional practice in topics we may have already covered.  My CPS system also allows me to receive instant results with these assessments as well which then allows me to provide my students with any deserved praise, or additional instruction for areas that they many have struggled on.

            The need for developing a good work ethic while learning good study skills are two important behaviors for fifth graders to develop.  Constant positive reinforcement is needed in order to develop these types of skills within ten and eleven year-olds.  While some fifth graders may struggle to understand the importance of developing these skills at this age, it is very fulfilling to watch those that do thrive.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2010). Program four. Behaviorist learning theory [Web Cast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore, MD:    Author.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.