While it may be safe to assume that people have positive attitudes toward experimenting with new technologies in the workplace, it may be equally safe to assume that you will encounter people in the workplace who have low self-efficacy in experimenting with new technologies. Briefly describe a situation in which you have encouraged people to use a new technology and have been met with resistance or disappointing results. What attitudes did these people exhibit? What behaviors did they demonstrate? Using Keller’s ARCS model, describe how you could change the motivation of these people, or learners, to encourage success.
I have been working alongside all different levels of technology expertise with my seven science teachers. One was more advanced than myself and was a mentor to me. On the other side of the pendulum, we have two teachers who were just beginning to use emails when I met them three years ago. It’s been interesting to watch them go through the growing pains with the technologies that are required at our school. They each have very different attitudes. The older gent was retired and came back into teaching. All our teachers are required to maintain Moodle curriculum guides with students logged in and track student grades on Snap Grades. He was the first to admit his lack of skills but was always responsive to ask for help and training from his director, peers, me, and even his adult son when he was working at home.
The other teacher is younger but not far from his generation, struggles to the point where she doesn’t even seek help and last year made a comment that emails were a waste of time. I took her under my wing, with lots of encouragement and praise, and we camped out at her house with another teacher last summer for three days and two nights to build Moodle curriculum guides. Not only was she trained, but she had two full days of uploading practice. She was quick to catch on, but to this day still has issues because she doesn’t do it often enough. Fortunately, she has enough confidence to ask for help from me, knowing I will not condemn her and realizing the importance. Of all the teachers I work with, I still have to call her occasionally because I can never trust that she will check her emails in a timely manner. She has come a long way and is more comfortable with power points and LCD projectors in her classroom. She is also very personable and encouraging with her students, and respects their competence with technology.
To analyze her development using Keller’s ARCS model, she received ATTENTION from her director when Moodle became mandated and when SnapGrades were implemented and parents were calling the school to find out why her grades were not posted. She almost lost her job last year, but I rallied for her and that also got her ATTENTION and inspired her to learn it. RELEVANCE falls into the same scenario with ATTENTION since this technology was required on a daily basis for her to be successful and meet the expectations of her job. CONFIDENCE was significantly gained after the three days of training and constant practice. She was proud of her accomplishment and I was constantly praising her intelligence for learning it so quickly. She was clearly SATISFIED with her new found abilities, and even though she still struggles, I remind her that each one of us is at a different level with technology and we are all learning on a daily basis.
To summarize, I would like to quote Keller, who was very proactive with problem-based learning strategies:
“…a deeper level of curiosity may be activated by creating a problem situation, which can be resolved only by knowledge seeking behavior” Keller 1987. Keller 1983 called this inquiry arousal – enhanced motivation when they can experience the complexity of problems that is characteristics of real life.”
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Connectivism
• How has your network changed the way you learn?
Information is abundant and fragmented. For curriculum development, I spend most of my time filtering and creating critical thinking and problem-based learning activities from the information for the students to practice.
• Which digital tools best facilitate learning for you?
1) For curriculum and teacher development, I access the internet for science sites and educator sharing sites, professional development videotaped workshops in Annenberg Media.
2) For students, I access the internet for science tutorials, videocasts, YouTube and TeacherTube for science demonstrations and hands-on lab ideas.
3) For home school students, we use Breeze for online “live” teaching sessions.
4) For teacher collaboration, I use Skype, Conference Calls, Breeze, as well as monthly live meetings.
5) For the highly intense Robotics team 6-week build, we communicate through emails, blogs, and the Robokong website when we are not together. We also post our team videos on YouTube for other teams to view. We access a blog site called Chief Delphi where several teams come together with discussions and ideas.
6) Google docs are used frequently by spontaneous teams at our school.
• How do you learn new knowledge when you have questions?
I use the internet, Walden library database, email colleagues, or post blogs for information gathering.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Constructivism - Collaboration - Technologies
Blog Walden course 8845 - Module 3
Do you believe that humans have a basic instinct to “interact and work as a group,” as Rheingold proposed in his discussion of the evolution of Wikipedia as a collectively developed encyclopedia? How can technology facilitate collaboration among learners based on constructivist principles?
Rheingold (“Howard Rheingold: Way-New Collaboration”
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration.html) could have gone back further in time, perhaps before the hunting parties, and discovered the basic foundation of human existence and survival was the grouping and working together of the family unit. Recently, I learned that the founders of F.I.R.S.T. (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) copyrighted their national theme of “gracious professionalism.” This is the organization that Dean Kamen (inventor of the Segway) and Woody Flowers founded to get high school students involved in engineering team collaboration for problem-solving, building, and testing robots for competitions each year. Even the competition is run in teams or alliances, which change each match. Success of each team is dependent on their ability to work with two other teams each match to accomplish the goals of the game. Twelve years later, there are over 3,000 teams across the US and internationally that compete.
Rheingold also stated that “the trans-disciplinary cooperation project is not going to just happen”, implying that we need to drive it. In my opinion, it is already happening with the “fourth wave” (an extension of futurist Toffler’s third wave) of social networking and collaboration as seen in the many examples he gave: Wikipedia, Google, Amazon, Think Cycles, eBay, open sourcing, Human Genome Project, Elli Lilly, Toyota and its suppliers, IBM and patents for commons. Whatever the motivations or driving forces, there is an innate need in humans to collaborate and work together in groups. As technology develops, so goes the collaboration.
Brainstorming in our robotic team this week has reminded me of the synergism of ideas. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. They are also collaborating with mentors from the local university engineering department as well as blogging with teams from all over the country that are working on the same problem (chiefdelphi community of forums and blogging). Constructivism principles are the framework, technologies provide the engine, and collaboration is the energy that powers the vehicle of tomorrow today.
Do you believe that humans have a basic instinct to “interact and work as a group,” as Rheingold proposed in his discussion of the evolution of Wikipedia as a collectively developed encyclopedia? How can technology facilitate collaboration among learners based on constructivist principles?
Rheingold (“Howard Rheingold: Way-New Collaboration”
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration.html) could have gone back further in time, perhaps before the hunting parties, and discovered the basic foundation of human existence and survival was the grouping and working together of the family unit. Recently, I learned that the founders of F.I.R.S.T. (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) copyrighted their national theme of “gracious professionalism.” This is the organization that Dean Kamen (inventor of the Segway) and Woody Flowers founded to get high school students involved in engineering team collaboration for problem-solving, building, and testing robots for competitions each year. Even the competition is run in teams or alliances, which change each match. Success of each team is dependent on their ability to work with two other teams each match to accomplish the goals of the game. Twelve years later, there are over 3,000 teams across the US and internationally that compete.
Rheingold also stated that “the trans-disciplinary cooperation project is not going to just happen”, implying that we need to drive it. In my opinion, it is already happening with the “fourth wave” (an extension of futurist Toffler’s third wave) of social networking and collaboration as seen in the many examples he gave: Wikipedia, Google, Amazon, Think Cycles, eBay, open sourcing, Human Genome Project, Elli Lilly, Toyota and its suppliers, IBM and patents for commons. Whatever the motivations or driving forces, there is an innate need in humans to collaborate and work together in groups. As technology develops, so goes the collaboration.
Brainstorming in our robotic team this week has reminded me of the synergism of ideas. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. They are also collaborating with mentors from the local university engineering department as well as blogging with teams from all over the country that are working on the same problem (chiefdelphi community of forums and blogging). Constructivism principles are the framework, technologies provide the engine, and collaboration is the energy that powers the vehicle of tomorrow today.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Behaviorism vs cognitivism OR behaviorism in support of cognitivism and beyond…..
I am what Karl Kapp referred to as one of the retiring baby boomers and my college student son, GK, would classify as one of the incoming gamers -
Behaviorism has its place
I have been observing GK’s self-motivated, self-initiated learning behaviors this week and interviewed him. Here’s a summary of my detail observations and then I will try to draw some conclusions on how learning by today’s digital age students relates to radical behaviorism and cognitive learning theories:
GK Case Study
1) Created a video today after self-teaching Sony Vegas Movie Studio software– why? Not assigned, not for credit, as a means to an end self-initiated goal
2) Practiced learning Solid Works software – why? Not assigned, not for credit, as a means to an end goal of near future applications in engineering program and possible applications to robot build starting in 2 weeks
3) Gaming – for fun, part of a “clan” or club, sometimes plays for competition (won 3rd place as sniper out of 30 players)
4) Constant trial and error whenever problem-solving compared to classroom mentality of teacher-directed with right or wrong answers; and does not encourage risk-taking, experimentation, or thinking like a scientist.
5) What works and what he likes about his recent computer programming class with a teacher-directed agenda – teacher modeled, students practiced on computer as teacher was modeling process, any errors in class were shared so group could benefit, peer tutoring when needed to help keep everyone together, each week project assigned with end goal – but students could choose many different paths to attain goal and it usually involved lots of problem-solving because there was not one prescribed “right” answer.
6) “I am motivated to accomplish a goal and the learning part is just a means to get to my goal”, for example, “ my goal is to build a robot, so I learn CAD” or “my goal is to make a video, so I learn the Sony software”
Although some may think behaviorism is dead - Stephen Downes – “…it remains puzzling that so much of the instructional design community remains rooted in behaviorism - this more than 30 years after the theory was abandoned everywhere else;” I concur with Bill Kerr – Bill Kerr_isms and Karl Kapp - Behaviorism has its place that behaviorism is alive and well.
Unfortunately, “external” behaviorism is the primary learning theory that is functioning today in many classrooms for the teacher’s end goal of classroom management, student engagement, student motivation, content rote learning (to pass mandated state tests), summative assessment of mastering content standard objectives.
The “inner” environment of behaviorism - Behaviorism-and-inner-environment - is a stepping stone and will always be a contributing factor in the learning process as the student integrates cognitivism and connectivism. Bill Kerr summarizes his collection of blogs “It seems to me that each _ism is offering something useful without any of them being complete or stand alone in their own right.” - Bill Kerr_isms
If the environment is teacher-directed, then a complex series of behaviorism strategies must be established to encourage learning in a prescribed, non-engaging scenario. Rob Costello, in his pedagogy of poverty and learning blog - Rob Costello – describes one outcome of forcing students to deal with abstractions before they are ready as lacking curiosity. I would add that many of the teacher-directed classroom strategies in place and the student outcomes are also common to schools not in urban poverty areas.
However, if the environment is student-directed, many of these external behaviorism learning strategies may not be needed. The student has the freedom of choice, is intrinsically motivated to question, problem-solve, to take risks and go with trial and error without fear of failure, is free to think like a scientist, creatively composes and works relentlessly at learning whatever is needed to accomplish the end goal. Student is practicing problem-solving, analyzing, evaluating, finding connections, researching history, collaborating, and critical thinking. Inner behaviorism is evident as student generates their own steps and tests in the process of accomplishing their goal. Student derives motivation and inspiration as they strive to accomplish the goal they have set for themselves.
Karl Kapp in his ABCD Objectives blog sums it up: “The ideal learning opportunity is probably something in the middle. Create a broad learning goal and then set the learners free to achieve the goal. We did this with Lego Robotics, we got a bunch of middle school kids together and told them to build and program a fast Lego car and then we let them fill in the specifics. You could literally walk around the room and ‘see’ the kids learning.”
Tags: educational technology, learning, elearning, learning theories, behaviorism, cognitivism, inner environment, critical thinking, problem-solving, motivation, creativity
Behaviorism has its place
I have been observing GK’s self-motivated, self-initiated learning behaviors this week and interviewed him. Here’s a summary of my detail observations and then I will try to draw some conclusions on how learning by today’s digital age students relates to radical behaviorism and cognitive learning theories:
GK Case Study
1) Created a video today after self-teaching Sony Vegas Movie Studio software– why? Not assigned, not for credit, as a means to an end self-initiated goal
2) Practiced learning Solid Works software – why? Not assigned, not for credit, as a means to an end goal of near future applications in engineering program and possible applications to robot build starting in 2 weeks
3) Gaming – for fun, part of a “clan” or club, sometimes plays for competition (won 3rd place as sniper out of 30 players)
4) Constant trial and error whenever problem-solving compared to classroom mentality of teacher-directed with right or wrong answers; and does not encourage risk-taking, experimentation, or thinking like a scientist.
5) What works and what he likes about his recent computer programming class with a teacher-directed agenda – teacher modeled, students practiced on computer as teacher was modeling process, any errors in class were shared so group could benefit, peer tutoring when needed to help keep everyone together, each week project assigned with end goal – but students could choose many different paths to attain goal and it usually involved lots of problem-solving because there was not one prescribed “right” answer.
6) “I am motivated to accomplish a goal and the learning part is just a means to get to my goal”, for example, “ my goal is to build a robot, so I learn CAD” or “my goal is to make a video, so I learn the Sony software”
Although some may think behaviorism is dead - Stephen Downes – “…it remains puzzling that so much of the instructional design community remains rooted in behaviorism - this more than 30 years after the theory was abandoned everywhere else;” I concur with Bill Kerr – Bill Kerr_isms and Karl Kapp - Behaviorism has its place that behaviorism is alive and well.
Unfortunately, “external” behaviorism is the primary learning theory that is functioning today in many classrooms for the teacher’s end goal of classroom management, student engagement, student motivation, content rote learning (to pass mandated state tests), summative assessment of mastering content standard objectives.
The “inner” environment of behaviorism - Behaviorism-and-inner-environment - is a stepping stone and will always be a contributing factor in the learning process as the student integrates cognitivism and connectivism. Bill Kerr summarizes his collection of blogs “It seems to me that each _ism is offering something useful without any of them being complete or stand alone in their own right.” - Bill Kerr_isms
If the environment is teacher-directed, then a complex series of behaviorism strategies must be established to encourage learning in a prescribed, non-engaging scenario. Rob Costello, in his pedagogy of poverty and learning blog - Rob Costello – describes one outcome of forcing students to deal with abstractions before they are ready as lacking curiosity. I would add that many of the teacher-directed classroom strategies in place and the student outcomes are also common to schools not in urban poverty areas.
However, if the environment is student-directed, many of these external behaviorism learning strategies may not be needed. The student has the freedom of choice, is intrinsically motivated to question, problem-solve, to take risks and go with trial and error without fear of failure, is free to think like a scientist, creatively composes and works relentlessly at learning whatever is needed to accomplish the end goal. Student is practicing problem-solving, analyzing, evaluating, finding connections, researching history, collaborating, and critical thinking. Inner behaviorism is evident as student generates their own steps and tests in the process of accomplishing their goal. Student derives motivation and inspiration as they strive to accomplish the goal they have set for themselves.
Karl Kapp in his ABCD Objectives blog sums it up: “The ideal learning opportunity is probably something in the middle. Create a broad learning goal and then set the learners free to achieve the goal. We did this with Lego Robotics, we got a bunch of middle school kids together and told them to build and program a fast Lego car and then we let them fill in the specifics. You could literally walk around the room and ‘see’ the kids learning.”
Tags: educational technology, learning, elearning, learning theories, behaviorism, cognitivism, inner environment, critical thinking, problem-solving, motivation, creativity
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Siemens' Metaphors of Educators
Metaphors of Educators (Siemens, 2008)
Although all four metaphors have elements that are valuable in an active, hands-on, inquiry, critical thinking, project-based learning environment of constructivism and connectivism, I was attracted to the curator educator. The teacher as curator expert can be the most effective guide for students with application and relevancy issues. The greatest challenge for this teacher will be to keep the breaks on themselves, not be tempted to answer student questions as much as to find creative ways to draw the students into exploration, research, critical thinking, and seeking their own answers. The curator may choose to use tools mentioned in the other metaphors such as the atelier model from the master artist, soft guidance from the concierge, and network administration guidance.
The effectiveness of these teaching strategies are not new, are well substantiated in research, but in my experience at traditional and charter public schools, are not being practiced in the secondary classrooms. The five high school academy science teachers that I am working with are really being stretched to even consider “inqurizing” their recipe-type labs. We also had a discussion this week about going textbook-less in our LMS Moodle curriculum, and that was unimaginable to them – they still wanted some version of some textbook. My view is to integrate technologies with Module themes, have open networking among teacher and students (like we practice at Walden), dig deep in the main topic for an entire semester and culminate it with a project, chosen and researched by the student. Instead of teaching to the state test, let the students dig deep and learn from non-lecture based classroom environments with a curator type teacher facilitating the process.
Here’s a video resource for “Teaching High School Science” from Annenberg Media (http://www.learner.org/resources/series126.html#) using different levels of inquiry, getting the students to formulate their own questions from their observations and prior knowledge, and to design their own experiments. This kind of resource is very helpful for teachers to model how they can conduct the same lab at different levels of inquiry and critical thinking challenges for the students – teacher’s choice!!
References:
Siemens, G. (2008, January 27). Learning and knowing in networks: Changing roles for educators and designers. Paper presented to ITFORUM. Retrieved from http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/Paper105 /Siemens.pdf
Siemens, G. (2005, April 5). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm.
Ertmer, P. & Newby, T. (1993). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 6 (4): 50-72 retrieved online from http://uow.ico5.janison.com/ed/subjects/edgi911w/readings/ertmerp1.pdf.
Although all four metaphors have elements that are valuable in an active, hands-on, inquiry, critical thinking, project-based learning environment of constructivism and connectivism, I was attracted to the curator educator. The teacher as curator expert can be the most effective guide for students with application and relevancy issues. The greatest challenge for this teacher will be to keep the breaks on themselves, not be tempted to answer student questions as much as to find creative ways to draw the students into exploration, research, critical thinking, and seeking their own answers. The curator may choose to use tools mentioned in the other metaphors such as the atelier model from the master artist, soft guidance from the concierge, and network administration guidance.
The effectiveness of these teaching strategies are not new, are well substantiated in research, but in my experience at traditional and charter public schools, are not being practiced in the secondary classrooms. The five high school academy science teachers that I am working with are really being stretched to even consider “inqurizing” their recipe-type labs. We also had a discussion this week about going textbook-less in our LMS Moodle curriculum, and that was unimaginable to them – they still wanted some version of some textbook. My view is to integrate technologies with Module themes, have open networking among teacher and students (like we practice at Walden), dig deep in the main topic for an entire semester and culminate it with a project, chosen and researched by the student. Instead of teaching to the state test, let the students dig deep and learn from non-lecture based classroom environments with a curator type teacher facilitating the process.
Here’s a video resource for “Teaching High School Science” from Annenberg Media (http://www.learner.org/resources/series126.html#) using different levels of inquiry, getting the students to formulate their own questions from their observations and prior knowledge, and to design their own experiments. This kind of resource is very helpful for teachers to model how they can conduct the same lab at different levels of inquiry and critical thinking challenges for the students – teacher’s choice!!
References:
Siemens, G. (2008, January 27). Learning and knowing in networks: Changing roles for educators and designers. Paper presented to ITFORUM. Retrieved from http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/Paper105 /Siemens.pdf
Siemens, G. (2005, April 5). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm.
Ertmer, P. & Newby, T. (1993). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 6 (4): 50-72 retrieved online from http://uow.ico5.janison.com/ed/subjects/edgi911w/readings/ertmerp1.pdf.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
ROBOMORPH - if you are wondering why I chose this name, it has nothing to do with the power rangers. I have been working with a high school robotics team for the past 2 years and I have seen a transformation (metamorphosis) in students as they emerge out of their cocoons into a land of inspiration and technology....
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