Cognitive Views of Learning

How could software applications and/or other technologies help you provide opportunities for your students to access their prior knowledge and better organize new information? That is, describe a lesson for which you might use technology to help with organization and describe the technology(ies) you might use. There are so many ways that technology and software applications can be used for students to connect with material and to organize the material to make it more memorable and accessible. I always teach with images and animations available on the internet and conceptual diagrams with these images. However, just recently I decided to make an assignment for the students to create their own concept map using the equation for photosynthesis and some other bits of information from our class. I felt the easiest and best application for the students to use was Gliffy.com. At the end of the assignment, the students shared their link with me and I posted their concept map on my webpage. I also presented each of their diagrams to the class and printed it for their notebooks. By showing the class each of their diagrams, it was evident how differently each of their minds visualized the material even though it was taught to them in essentially the same way. Here are two of the concept maps built by Yoon, Amber and Julie. I also used Gliffy.com for the students to create animal and plant cell diagrams. A website I love to use with my students to help them organize their information is similar to the traditional flashcards with a more technological twist. I use studystack.com to ask specific questions or to enter vocabulary words into interactive flash cards. The best part about studystack (besides being free) is that once you have entered the information, you can choose a variety of ways to present it. For example, you can enter the information in the form of flashcards but with a click of a button you can play hang-man with the same words or a matching game. In addition, the cards can be printed in a variety of formats for review. I encourage the students to make their own study stacks and to share them with the class for extra credit. Check out Kristina's study stack. All in all, technology helps in cognitive learning by preventing the overload of the working memory and helping the student integrate the material into his/her long-term memory. Technology helps organize the material and makes the material more visual so that it is easier to remember. By creating and producing using technologies, it becomes more evident to the teacher how well the student is understanding the material. Technology is a great facilitator for cognitive learning.

Applications of TEAM to my classes

TEAM is a wonderful learning experience for me. I am using many of the things I am learning in TEAM with my classes at Herricks High School. I used Voicethread for the first time with my Marine Biology class. This class is in the alternative school and I find that the students are incessantly talking in class. So to get them talking about our field trip, I sent them all invitations to a Voicethread slideshow of our field trip. I provided 2 weeks for the students to comment at least 10 Marine Biology facts (more for extra credit). I received a lot of silly comments, but the students for the first time were all actively doing their homework each day, and were excited for me to check it! The next assignment that I tried was a presentation in Google documents with my Regents class. I first had each student register a Gmail account. Next, I taught them in class how to edit a presentation in their account. Students received a week to enter the document and then edit one slide. At the end of the week, each student contributed information that resulted in a 24 slide show. I then copied the slides into keynote, added some effects and music, and then presented the show to the students in class. It was cool and the feedback from the students suggests that they would use this application on their own. Mission accomplished. I am going to try and post these two projects in this blog so you can see them. Voicethread

Constructivism Module

Do you want to learn about organic compounds? I didn’t think so. The students all feel the same way…they dread the biochemistry topic every year, but the concepts are repeated throughout the living environment course and are essential stepping-stones to the concepts that follow. Each year, the students that study - get it, and those that don’t, don’t get it. How do I get them all to know the organic compounds? Well, this year I tried something different. “Make a project on the organic compounds” I tell them…”it will be due in two weeks”. A student raises her hand…”but I don’t understand what to do”. “Do anything you want”, I said, “just make sure you include information about the organic compounds, make it fun, interesting, use technology, something you know how to use, something maybe you don’t know how to use, challenge yourself, have fun.” I hope that I’m promoting an open-learning environment. I hope that its not too open. I hope with open-ended learning goals and open-ended methods through which the goals could be pursued I get a product that shows they learned. I hope the process for them is enjoyable so they want to learn like this in the future. So, I provided a webpage on my website with suggestions for those that needed a push. I provided the webtools and links that I have learned in T.E.A.M. but I didn’t teach them. I just made it accessible, made suggestions that were easy, and they took them! I can’t believe it. When I ask them to listen and learn, they don’t, but when I expect them to learn and let them take care of it on their own, they we able to chose their own method of learning and produce evidence of their learning. The students filled out a web-form for me about their project idea. In this way, I could monitor their progress and offer assistance when they needed it. Tomorrow the students will bring in their projects but I already started receiving them last week. I’m impressed; the students took the information from the textbook, and the notes from class and made projects. A movie: Justin the Science Guy, a slideshow made on rockyou!, flashcards made on study stack, game shows, songs, and more. Some worked in groups, others worked independently, and then some even worked independently and then collaborated in groups. And they constructed this all on their own. Constructivism? Of course, with a class of 28, you will get some lazy students who want the information to be provided to them. However, I believe observational learning can be really powerful in these situations. All students will view the projects of others and some of the projects require student participation. In this way, all students are being exposed to the information. All students will benefit, since it is likely that the information is being presented in various ways because of different student perspectives. I believe through observational learning, the ripple effect or the “contagious” spreading of behaviors through imitation will occur, and students that sold themselves short of the learning process in this project, may accept the challenge for future projects. I believe peer models are especially effective and the social collaboration is a good motivation for the lazy students. In my opinon, I think this is all practice for later more important topics in my classroom. Should stem cell research be permitted? Are we the cause of global warming? How can we educate the community about going Green? Personally, if I can get the class excited about the organic compounds using this approach, then those should be a piece of cake, right? I’ll attach two sample projects from students in my class. Tomorrow and the rest of the week I will receive the rest and I’ll be able to post them on my website for the other students to use as a review.

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iMovie Workshop

I attended the iMovie workshop on October 6th at the C.W. Post campus. Before the workshop, I really wanted to learn the ins and outs of the program. I want to be be able to create fun slideshows and edit video easily and without hassle. The program isn't as easy as I thought it. It is time consuming and somewhat confusing. I hoped to learn a lot, but the time permitted for the workshop was insufficient. I believe if the instructors provided video clips to us instead of the us using time to make video, we would have saved a lot of valuable work time. Learning how to video could be a separate workshop. We really didn't discuss much about the program. I did learn one or two tricks so when I continued to pursue the program on my own I was able to figure some things out. I guess I just wanted to be more efficient when using the program. I am going to try and upload my iMovie I completed today. It took me a long time for a very short movie. Enjoy...it's my family having a corn eating contest as a goof!

Google Documents

I'm currently using Google documents with my Living Environment class. This class is a very small class in the Shelter Rock Academy part of Herricks High School. With my assistance, the students are collaboratively designing an experiment which they will eventually carry out in class. Here is the link to the students' experiment and the progress they have made so far: My students' google documents experiment

Creepy Eye Guy

My First Blog

I created my first blog.