Kate's Take

"In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn."  - Phil Collins Regardless of your educational philosophy, it is well known that best practices in K-12 education point toward collaboration, authentic learning experiences, and in scaffolding educational experiences to benefit the learners.  Looking at the statistics in Brown et al, it's undeniable that the process of encouraging students to take the role as teacher, especially in the context of reading comprehension, can benefit the students in the ability to transfer the process to the next paragraph or reading task.  Reading the sample conversation, however, I wonder if the authenticity discussed in the article on apprenticeship is there. With so much quality content available, the article about crows seems odd.  Are the students especially interested in crows?  Would an article or story about a child their age or a favorite music star, or a video game they are interested in be more appropriate?...

I've always been someone who tries to use templates to make tasks easier.  Silber and Forshay encourage instructors to do just that in their instructional model regarding different types of learning.  This makes a lot of sense because all important steps are accounted for to allow learning to have the best chance of sucess to stick.  Though the process may look a little different, the steps are the same.  Select the information that is relevant.  What's your "why" here from a student perspective? Connect it to previous knowledge.  Make the relationships clear and get learner buy in.  Organize information.  Create structure around learning. Assimilate information.  Use graphic organizers, images, videos.  Tie previous information to new learning.  Strengthen learning.  Review, practice, offer feedback and commit to memory.  If any one of these steps are missed, learning will not be as strong as it could be, and may not be r...

 As a former K-12 educator and a mother of children in middle school currently, the bill currently under consideration by the Indiana Senate committee floats to the top in many conversations about education in general.  This bill not only insults the extensive and continuing education of educators in public schools, but it also minimizes their impact on young learners.   Skinner's chapter, "The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching" puts this into high focus, discussing reinforcement of correct behaviors are necessary for longevity of the learning to stick.  Early in education, learners would perform to avoid a negative consequence.  Today, it would be difficult to find an elementary classroom without some form of posive reinforcement present.  It also discusses how devices can replace the role of a teacher in some circumstances with instant positive feedback (and allowing progression to another problem, however as Mayer discusses in his article,...

Prior to this week, I had seen Gagne's theory in educational theory courses in the past.  Most of these focus on Bloom's taxonomy, but Gagne's theory is from a different perspective - what is the CONTENT doing TO the learner - for example, gaining attention or providing feedback.  Bloom focuses on what the learner can do with the information gained based on the depth of understanding.  Gagne's theory addresses the fact that the learner has to interact with material in multiple ways to gain understanding - and it also acknowledges the ever important "hook" - if a learner isn't engaged or paying attention, no learning can take place.  As I believe I mentioned in a previous blog post, the learner has to be a willing participant, it cannot be forced as it is completely singular in it's task.  You learning something has no effect on my knowledge of it and vice versa.  I want to also talk about the last step - enhancing retention and transfer.  One of the co...