Reflection 4:  Emerging Theories and Strategies

We have to be knowledge seekers in this generation in order to survive the constant changes that happen daily.  My focus of this reflection is on understanding the difference between Transactional Distance, Social Cognitive and Connectionivism theory. 

“Essentially, research evidence shows that in spite of the many efforts that researcher and educators invested over the years in preparing teachers in the educational uses of technology, teachers still lack the skills and knowledge needed to be able to teach with technology successfully” (Angeli & Valanides, 2009).  This thought has been a constant thought since I have started the EdTech program.  After thinking about this topic for year and half now, it still seems clear to me that we need to allow the students to teach teachers and that schools need a real IT application departments.    In order for transactional distance to be meaningful to the learning experience, teacher must have dialog and/or interaction between their learners and have a good design instruction and autonomy.  Autonomy means to work alone and still understand meaning with little input.   Is that what students need to learn?

The authors, Rita Kop and Adrian Hill, conducted a critically analysis of the Connectivism theory and the approach to teaching students.  They analyzed if web applications would enhance learners experience with collaboration and communication related to the theory of Connectivism. Connectivism is thought as a [“learning process is cyclical, in that learners will connect to a network to share and find new information”] (Kop & Hill, 2008).   I found this article to be in aligned about my thoughts about Social-Cognitive theory.  However, do not think Connectivism and Transactional Distance theory can stand alone as a theory for learning. 

 I believe social-cognitive theory allows for creating individual learning.  “Social-cognitive theories emphasize that teaching and learning are highly social activities and that interactions with teachers, peers, and instructional material influences the cognitive affective development of learners (Kim & Baylor, 2006).” 

Learning can be done a variety of ways for any student, but it’s important that as teachers, we understand that people learning style is always going to be different based on if we are auditory, visual, tactile, or kinesthetic. That why having teaching has to allow for highly social activities and interactions with peers of the same learning style.

 I also, believe if schools had their own IT application department it would meet the needs of Transactional, Social Cognitive and Connectivism theories.    The more I find out about how little our education system spend training teachers on new technology it does not amaze me that children are flying by them with a better know how.   In the business world the vendor spend so much more time with the staff to make sure they understand the application.  Many of my classmates in this program have informed me they never even see the vendor in their schools.  Why is that? 

This really makes me re-think about why I feel more business should be involved with our education system.    Not promoting food and drinks, but taking the time to educate our teachers and students on the technology they work with in the field.  It seem like if our companies just had one employee take a day to go teach to a group of kids would do wonders for the teachers in our communities and students.  We don't need the best of the best of the business world teaching our students we just need knowledge people with valid insight communicating about the little things they use to improve their jobs.  I am always amazed how we all use Word every day but in the scheme of things we know very little about all the bells and whistles.   Just last semester, I have learned how to build table of contents that works with all my page numbering.  Yeah, it problem something I learned five-years-ago but I had forgot it overtime.  Creating an environment of learning and modeling based off the Social Cognitive theory for the future leaders is better for our culture as a whole in the long run.

 Lindy

References:

Angeli, C., & Valanides, N. (2008). A Social-Cognitive Framework for Pedagogical Agents as Learning Companions. Computers & Education, 52, 154–168.

Kim, Y. & Baylor, A. (2006). A social-cognitive framework for pedagogical agents as learning companions. Educational Technology, Research and Development, 54(6), 569-596.  Retrieved February 18, 2012, from ProQuest Central. (Document ID: 1211218511).

Kob, R., & Hill, A. (October, 2008.). Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past? Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/523/1137

Reflection 2:  Philosophy of Education: Epistemology and Learning Theory

I learned many things in writing my Learning Theories paper.  Using OneNote to compile my thoughts and notes made writing my paper a lot easier.   I am really starting to get how to organize my notes to make them more meaningful to write a paper.  I think my Process of Learning and Motivation is Crucial paper turned out pretty good. 

I documented quite of few questions and terms for during my learning process for writing my paper in OneNote. 

 People are not blank slates but begin with models and knowledge of the world and learn and exist in a social context of great intricacy and depth (Anderson & Dron, 2011).  This thought is what I based much of my reading and research about.  It was interesting to me that in the reading the Seels and Richely pointed out effectiveness often implies efficiency when it comes to technology. But in real life technology is not always effective and efficient.

 The article by Phillips stated something quite interesting to me "human development and to what degree this process is flexible and hence can be influenced or manipulated; the tension between liberal education and vocational education, and the overlapping issue of which should be given priority—education for personal development or education for citizenship " (Spring 2009). My first thought, is this what our districts leaders think needs to happen in our schools? We need to focus more on citizenship instead of a well-round liberal education.  In some ways, that is what I think at work.  However, when it comes to my daughter, I think, she should be well rounded and not have one focus area in education.   During the course of reading about this article I was sitting in a Girl Scout meeting with some other parents waiting for our daughters to finish a project.

 A discussion came up if children should learn how to cursive right anymore.  At first I was shock because, I would think, is a valuable thing to learn.  The first thought came to my mind; will children know how to sign important documents in the future if they don't how to write in cursive?  As I was thinking about this, a parent speaks up and said kids don't need to learn cursive they need to learn how to type.  Half of the guys I work have poor typing skills because they never learned how to type in school.  It made me sit back and think about this article.  Teaching cursive would make a child more rounded in the arts of writing but in the long run the child needs to know how to type.  I am still not sure what my stance is but it did give me much to think about. 

The thought about education system made me think about the results by the OECD 2010.  Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 2009 Results by the OECD 2010 Stated “The best-performing education systems embrace the diversity in students’ capacities, interests and social background with individualized approaches to learning.  This thought also from the Philosophy of Education by Phillips meant a lot to me “We never would say that students had been indoctrinated by their teacher if he or she had fostered open inquiry and discussion, encouraged exploration in the library and on the net, allowed students to work in collaborative groups, and so on. However, if the teacher did not allow independent inquiry, quashed classroom questions, suppressed dissenting opinions, relied heavily on rewards and punishments, used repetition and fostered rote memorization, and so on, then it is likely we would say the students were being indoctrinated ( 2009)."  I really think the first model of thought is what we in our society at first but I could see why the second theory of thought was used for so many years and it some aspects today.   Teachers use to be the sole owners of educational knowledge but now with the internet and technology we have a world of teachers without degrees behind their names.   Not to say they all can facilitate the learning experience but I do believe they can help teacher bridge concepts for students.  That is why explored the Social Cognitive Theory for my paper. 

Albert Bandura (2001) believes that humans can use learning and motivation to power their own actions and produce desired consequence to shape their social and cultural environments.    As quoted from Anderson & Dron, "teachers do not merely transmit knowledge to be passively consumed by learners; rather, each learner constructs means by which new knowledge is both created and integrated with existing knowledge"(2010).  If the student’s engagement should not be an inevitable consequence of the environment but an engagement of learning and motivation that help the student get to the clear goal (Feist & Feist, 2002).  

 The process of learning more about the Social Cognitive theories still just makes me concluded more that I support this thought of using this theory to support learning and technology.   I would have to say that I have support this theory most of my adult career but learning more about how it being used in research to understand education technology make me optimist about how might educational system will support all kinds of learners:  visual, auditory, tactile  and or kinesthetic in the future. 

Lindy

References:

 

Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2010). Three generations of distance education pedagogy. The International Review Of Research In Open And Distance Learning, 12(3), 80-97. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/890

 

Feist, J. & Feist, G., (2002) Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory.  In J. Karpacz (Eds.), Theories of Personality, Fifth Edition (pp. 299-326). New York: McGraw-Hill 

Phillips, D.C., "Philosophy of Education", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/education-philosophy/>.

Seels, B., & Richey, R. (1994). Instructional technology: The definition and domains of the field.  Washington, DC: Association for Educational Communications and Technology.

 

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology. (2010). National educational technology plan, 2010: Executive summary. retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/NETP-2010-exec-summary.pdf

Reflection 1: Educational Technology

My thoughts about Educational Technology might be different than some students in my class.  I am not a K-12 or higher education teacher.  All of my teaching is done a corporate level in healthcare.  So my perspective is a bit different, but I would say that we have some of the same ideas and goals.   Goals and motivation seem to be my most outstanding thought that I have about educational technology.   Improving performance, I think, is the goal of any educational technology but in most cases I sometime wonder if anyone every asked the question what the goal of the performance should be.  I struggle with this concept in my own field when a technology is introduced to my end users.  I am always wondering if the goal of the outcome was to just have them use a new application or was it to improve patient care.  I know the answer is patient care but the goal getting there is not always as clear as one would think.  One thing that is important to understanding technology and education is to make sure we understand what motivates the learner to learn and only then, will we improve performance.

 I read a great article last semester from Gray Hamel that make great since to me about corporate training.  Hamel’s article made a very good point about business, they often sends an e-mail to a group and believes the word “training” in the subject line means that training is complete.  This made me think, as stated by Hamel possible the cause of for number of organizational initiative failures every year, is because of the “lack of attention to individual’s learning needs” so it does not only happen in K-12 but in large organizations as well (Hamel, 2009).  This made me think about theories done about technology and education, do they only look at young adults learning when they are doing these studies.  How often do universities use older adults for learning studies?  In most of the studies I read as undergrad in psychology tend to only have freshmen in the studies.  I have to admit that I learn a lot different now than I ever did in high school and even my freshmen year.   

One thing that I found to be interesting by one of my classmates is he let his students use cell phones in the classroom. I really like the fact that more teachers are not look at technology as a cheating tool for students.  The business world uses cell phones every day to conduct business, why would we not teach students how to balance both worlds as well?  It just something I found to be very interesting. 

The knowledge I have gained from learning a better definition about education technology is that we have to make sure that we keep the process of learning and technology a group effort as is learning from each other as well as making sure we still manage the complex issues.  I feel that my experience in learning more about the definition of technology helps influence those around me.  I want to make sure we understand the goals and the motivation of what makes a learner meet performance.  I know, this will always be a struggle for me because often times those in leadership only see one way people learn.  I think that is something that I now understand from many of my classmates, people making the decisions about education sometimes only see black and white learning but the teachers who teach are colorful.    I just hope with this process of understanding more about the education technology and the decisions that are be made I can enlighten those who we need to be open to the learning needs of our students, parents, educators, and business people learning.  We all learn different and for good reason because we all have something to contributes to our culture to make it a better place.  Training should not be centered on technology, but on the way the human mind works using the technology (Atkinson & Mayer, 2004). 

I think that Januszewki’s definition is pretty close to how I feel that Education Technology should be defined.  This might how I would state it:

        Educational technology is a complex, integrated process, involving people, instructional design, ideas, devices, and organization, for analyzing problems and devising, implementing, evaluating and managing solutions to those problems, involved in all aspects of human environment of learning and motivation.

 Lindy

References:

Atkinson, C. & Mayer, R. (2004). 1 2 3 4 5 Five ways to reduce PowerPoint overload. Retrieved from http://www.sociablemedia.com/PDF/atkinson_mayer_powerpoint_4_23_04.pdf

Hamel, Gary. (2009) Moon Shots for Management – Harvard Business Review. (n.d.). Retrieved September 21, 2011, from http://hbr.org/2009/02/moon-shots-for-management/ar/1

Januszewski, A. (2001). Educational Technology: The Development of a Concept. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, Inc.

Januszewski, A., & Molenda, M. (2008). Chapter 1: Definition. In Educational technology: A definition with commentary (pp. 1 – 14). NY: Lawrence Erlbaum, Inc.

Note:  I put all of this together using OneNote.  It worked out very nicely because I could have all my thoughts in one place.  Still did have to do some printing for note taking on the articles I used.  Still on the learning curve for that.

Intro to my 504 EdTech Blog

This is a place for me to track my reflections for my EdTech 504 Theoretical Foundations of Educational Technology class. The reflections are designed to better understand the reasons for my actions in the aspect of teaching based on the theories, I learn about in class. I will use this tool in such a way to document and track my progress and my work during the course of the class. We have been given the following guidelines for our reflections in class:

• Where are you now, in teams of your own teaching and professional practice and the inclusion of educational technology in that process?
• What kind of change do you hope to see as a result of this class?
• How might your knowledge and experiences influence the actions of those around you?

I have started a new process this semester by using OneNote to track my thoughts and notes during this class. One of things, I tend to struggle with in the EdTech program is keeping all the information, I have learned, in one place to refer back to. I tried using paper folders, notebooks and screenshots. However, I find myself still printing and digging through piles of paper in my office to find the quote or handout I need.

So far, OneNote allows me to put links, videos, and references all in one place and it’s been pretty easy to find things with in the program after I have saved them. I wished it worked with Zotero.  It has something like it but it just not as good as Zotero.  As I learn more I will make sure to share with all of you.   

I am not going to say that I have completely let go of my paper world yet, but it has decreased quite a bit. I know, I am taking school online but that does not mean those of us who are online learners still don't love paper. My husband finally moved my office upstairs because he could not handle my paper piles anymore. I am a pile organizer and when he moves my papers, I go crazy. The new office is working out better for the both of us.  My hope as I become more knowledgeable about the OneNote application I want to create my paper world to be complete mobile.  The great thing about using OneNote is that it works on my smart phone. 

Lindy