Week 12 Jly

Learning is completing 12 weeks of readings, lesson plans, blog posts, and discussions on a multiple of different learning theories and being able to have an intelligable conversation with a colleague about them. I am so glad that I have had the opportunity to review these learning theories throughout this semester. They seem to mean so much more to me as a teacher now then they did in undergraduate study. WEIRD!!!
The best way that I can effectuate this new learning is to better understand my students and apply the various learning theories as they are needed in my classroom.
August???? School???? Bring it on!!!!!

Week 11 July 20

Vygotsky's theory makes me think that learning needs to be full of challenges, but also successes whether they be easy or difficult accomplishments.
As Teacher/Trainers we need to be aware of where their development is to allow for these accomplisments to take place. I think one of the best ways to better understand where our students are is by using frequent forms of formative assessment for our benefit as well as for the student.

Week 10 July 13

Learning? Well this week I think it is about discovery. Based upon Bruner's theory of spiraled curriculum, learners can learn any subject at any level of development as long as you can bring it to their level of understanding.
Teachers/trainers can better do this by picking and choosing things in their curriculum that really matter and that they will need to know as adults and be better contributors to society. One thing that I am going to is really think about what I teach each day and determine what in that lesson is important enough to really focus on and make sure they learn.

Week 9 July 6

Learning to me this week is to become aware of something by information or by observation. With the learning theory this week, learning is all about reality. It makes me think about how so many people think that as individuals we are either book smart or common sense smart, but that hardly you ever see people that are both.
As teachers/trainers we need to make sure to incorporated both so that are learners can take the information we help them acquire and use it in their lives.

Week 8 June 29

It doesn't matter if you are in church, school, a conference or just visiting over lunch, if you can link new information to a story or some set of interesting knowledge to the listener I think you will have success. Learning takes place when new knowledge has character to back it up. It is always more fun for the learner to have some sort of interest invested into the learning.
As trainers/teachers we need to keep this in mind when presenting new information. While we may find that what we say is extremely important, the learner doesn't see it that way unless you have reeled them in with some sort of clincher.

Week 7 June 22

Learning using Intrinsic motivation is important, but I think that sometimes as a teacher you need to be sneaky in order for it to be intrinsic for the learner to want to participate. Now that it is summer I have decided that it is time to potty train X, our 2 year old boy. I don't care what any book tells you about potty training, a kid is going to figure it out when he is intrinsically motivated. You can use all of the extrinsic motivation you want with some success, but ultimately they need to see the value in using the restroom before they will commit to the process. I have been lucky so far, because it is apparent that he is ready for the change. He wants to be big like his brothers and not go the bathroom in his pants. Sure he has had some accidents, but he is moving in the right direction with the right motivation.
As teachers, we need to take a more active roll in finding the intrinsic route. I think sometimes too often we rely on the extrinsic motivation techniques because they get instant results, but like Malone discussed, once it is gone they will not see a need to do it again.
I think we also forget that all students don't think our subject matter is as cool or interesting as we think it is. In order to grab their interest we need to teach to their level and understand their perceptions of the subject.

Week 6 June 15

As a mother of 6, I have children that fall in each of the 4 stages of development that Piaget distinguishes between. Xaviah, or just X is our 2 year old that has been as of late in the sensory-motor stage, but has rapidly moved into pre-operational representation. He is learning so rapidly and is reformatting all that he learned in the previous stage. Walker and Hayden are currently in the concrete operations stage of development. I watch them focus their learning on ordering and love simple math that is definitive. Nick and Gabe are twins and Kylie is just a year older. All three of them have recently moved into hypothetic deductive operations stage. With Nick and Gabe being 11 they are just figuring out some abstract math and continually ask me to come up with algebric equations to ask them. Kylie has been in this stage for a couple of years now and she uses a lot of deductive reasoning in her attempt to learn new information.
Looking at my kids and studying Piaget this week I define learning depends upon the four factors that Piaget says explain development which are Maturation, experience, social transmission, and equilibrium.
As teacher/trainers we can encourage and support learning by understanding the different developmental stages and consider the learners from this vantage point to better fit their needs and increase understanding and retention.

Week 5 June 8

WOW!!!! My mind is racing with ideas about learning this week. I am currently at a Professional Learning Communities conference in Las Vegas, Nevada and I am being hit left and right with ideas about learning.
My ideas on learning today is that learning needs to be the fundamental purpose of our schools and with that purpose we as educators need to be willing to look at ALL teaching practices and determine their impact on learning. In order to accomplish this giant task we need to be willing to cultivate a collaborative culture through same level, same course effective teams. These teams can then assess current effectiveness on the basis of results rather than intentions and move toward continuous improvement.
I have learned at this conference that there needs to be a shift of focus from teacher/teaching to learner/learning. If teachers, teams and schools can begin to make this shift they will see good things happen.
Any comments????

Week 4 June 1

This week I have had to step up to the plate regarding using technology to help learners. Our district has decided, due to budget cuts, that more training for teachers needs to be done online. So me, along with others, have had the task of transferring once face to face trainings into online trainings. Since I have had a great deal of experience with online training this seemed like a task that would take time, but would be easy to transfer the information to an online version. The other members of my cohort have not had any experience with online learning and have had a hard time with giving up some of the face to face elaboration of material that comes with this type of training. I have had to be very patient with them regarding this online learning mind frame.
With this in mind my definition of learning this week is generational. Learning, in my opinion, generally takes place differently depending upon the generation of the learner.
Here is some information I got about Generational differences from a book called "Generations At Work" (Zemke, Raines, Filipczak 2000).
The Veterans: They like consistency and uniformity. They are very disciplined, learn through
logic, and are hard working.
The Baby Boomers: Through Education they learned about teamwork. May put process ahead of result. Many struggle with technology, but thrive on learning.
The Gen Xers: balance work and play. Technologically they are savy. Adaptable yet impatient. Learned from diverse viewpoints, and encouraged to disagree and debate issues.
The Nexters: They have street smarts. Technological sophistication and positive expectations. They learn best in teams under the influence of a strong central authority figure.
In light of some of these generational differences, I think that in order to be an effective teacher there is a need to study the generational styles. Even faculties have issues that seem to be generational based. More learning could probably take place if we as teacher/trainers new more about these differences.
Something to think about!!!!!

Week 3 May 26

The past few weeks I have been spending a lot of my time reading the reflections of first year teachers regarding their first year of teaching. So this week as I try to define learning I am gearing more of my definition to the reflective part of learning that comes after you have completed a task and are then looking back upon it and determining what it was you learned, what that task taught you, and now that you have achieved it what are you going to differently, if anything next time you need to accomplish a similar task. So much of our everyday learning happens this way, but we fail to learn from it by reflecting in this manner.
I have learned so much about the new teachers in my district by reading their reflections and I think this type of learning can be effectuated by having new teachers in the future read some of these papers before their first year begins, or even having some of them come back to the first new teacher training and have them hear first hand from second year teachers what was really important to them as they look back at their first year.
So in a nutshell, learning can be more profound and have an influence if we, as the learner, can look back on an experience and really analyze what it was we are walking away from the experience with and what we are going to do with that new found knowledge.

Week 1 May 11

I did post last week, but I posted as a comment under my getting started post. I am still pretty new at this, but this is a repeat of what I posted there.

Learning to me is to gain knowledge about something or of a skill through study, experience or being taught. This learning can be put into force by a teacher/trainer in a variety of ways depending upon the choice of delivery. If a teacher is keeping the following 5 things in mind, I believe that learning will take place.
1. Engage all learners
2. Be Professional
3. Evaluate and Assess formatively
4. Create a positive environment
5. Plan curriculum that will benefit all students.
Let me know what you think about these 5 areas.

Week 2 May 18

My thoughts this week about learning have grown based on reading for this class and readings from our other classes. This week my mind seems to be moving toward a more simple approach to defining learning. In the book "Disrupting Class" (2008) the authors discuss in the introduction about all the different possible reasons why U.S. public schools are not improving at a quicker rate. Who is to blame???? So this week I am thinking about learning more in regards to multiple intelligences. We all have different ways of learning. For example myself, I am more Interpersonal and Bodily kinesthetic. So I think that I tend to teach to those two intelligences more than others. To help effectuate this research I think that I need to focus next year on incorporating the other intelligences in my curriculum to get more students involved.
So in a nutshell Learning to me is individual specific!!!!!

Getting Started

This blog will focus on two questions, which are; "What is learning?" and How can learning be best effectuated by a teacher/trainer?"
I am excited for this blog and hope you feel like you can add to the information gathered here.