In this post I intend to give a brief overview of what we learnt in ICT this week (week1). We established a blog (you know this already). It seems to be working just fine although I intend to play with it more to work out the bugs.

This is a picture of me. I just put it in there to be sure I could figure it out. It seems to be working just fine. ICT will probably be a bit of a sticking point for me this term. I mean its not like I'm making classes with big bound blocks of paper that resemble something you wrap fish in. This will be new. 

Our Second part of the assignment was to watch a movie. The movie was about Neuro Science as it pertains to learning. This is important to understand because of the different filtering systems the human person has in the brain. The long and the short of the video is that students learn better if they are calmly examining novelty. Some new point of curiosity being examined in a calm environment is the key to the best learning.

It is also very important to find the middle ground between frustration with difficult material and boredom with material that is just too easy. This is where individual personalisation of the lesson for every student can really help keep students involved in the lesson. 

It is also important to work in mental breaks in the lesson. She called them SYN-NAPS (clever). The idea is to give that part of the brain a break and do something else for one or two minutes and then start again. 

One of the main points was that a testing environment is a toxic environment for learning. (someone should mention this to the people at the school of pharmacy) 

                     

There were four basic learning theories covered in the next lesson as an overview of learning theory.

Behaviourism (objectivism) --> This is learning through repetition which can lead to behaviour change. You would expect to encounter this in math class or learning biology muscle group names. This is the typical route learning style that is sometimes the only way to learn things. 

Cognitivism -->understanding the concept not just the effect.  This kind of learning is great for when why something has a certain answer is just as important as the answer itself. This learning style recognises that it is necessary to understand the bigger picture so that a student can continue to get the right answers as the concept changes subtly. Concept mapping is an example of a tool used in this style of learning

Social constructivism-->learners create there own knowledge through experiences. (Read facebook, twitter, discussion, collaboration, etc) learning must still be scaffolded, but blogs, wikis, and discussion forums allow constant referral to what was learnt.

Connectivism --> In this form of learning the pipeline and its connections are more important that what is in the pipeline. To some extent learners no longer need to have full working knowledge of the subject matter. They need to have an understanding of vetting information and how to access the proper information. In this teaching method understanding an authoritative source and what constitutes an authoritative source for any given subject is more important then actually having full subject knowledge. It is an acknowledgement that you can't have full knowledge anymore on any subject. There is just too much to know, and its constantly changing.

-->It needs to be understood that you need all learning methods<--

You can have a favourite method, but you need to use them all. Specific learners will have favourite methods also and some students will only be able to learn one way which may not be your pet method. You will need to adapt to meet the students need.  

Well that covers week one I hope you found it interesting and informative. I will be here once a week to post my next instalment. please leave feedback in the comment section, and do check out that first link its a rather informative graphic.