R10 | Kirschner, et al. & Rosen

Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work and The Myth of Multitasking are two timely and important articles for today's instructional conversations.  Just last week I sat in two meetings all about Problem and Project based learning from national organizations (CCSSO for example).  I'm not saying that this article has changed my thoughts completely, but I am it does empower me to ask critical questions.

Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark state, "the consequences of requiring novice learners to search for problem solutions using a limited working memory or the mechanisms by which unguided or minimally guided instruction might facilitate change in long-term memory appear to be routinely ignored."  The concern the authors bring forth is the poor teacher instruction on when to deploy these core constructivist strategies. It is the problem of "you don't know, what you don't know." We can not let that go misguided.  The connection for me is the strategies the authors point at, such as, worked examples and guided practice are direct instructional practices. For "novel" information, they seem to be the lead of hitters, for any planned PBL implementation.  If missed, the authors are right on point. The authors go on to express:

"The constructivist description of learning is accurate, but the instructional consequences suggested by constructivists do not necessarily follow."

This brings me full circle, making connections on my constructivist theories with behaviorist additions.  It is very concerning, as the articles declares, that not much definitive research on Problem or Project Based Learning is out there. We take this for granted too often. I'll be looking for more and the other side of this coin in the up coming months.

Moving on to multi-tasking...

Russell Poldrack, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that “multitasking adversely affects how you learn. Even if you learn while multitasking, that learning is less flexible and more specialized, so you cannot retrieve the information as easily.” This conversation is very relevant to today's work.  Especially in the educational technology field. Earlier this semester I shared some similar research.

and...

I love what Poldrack points out. He explains, “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.” The one stead fast differentiation that I will continue to explore is novel concepts or novel information versus high cognitive load concepts.

This ideas in these two articles are and will continue to be very HOT TOPICS.  I look forward to the future research and discussions they will bring forth.

R9 | Foer & Friedrichs

Long term memory (LTM) is something that I am well known for.  OK, so that lack of long term memory is something that I am well known for. In fact, a quick connection with the words LTM, breaks me out in a cold sweat.

I'll detour through a quick personal connection. I am very blessed to be married to my wife. We started "dating" in seventh grade. Maybe it wasn't dating, but it was certainly holding hands at lunch and at recess. My point is that we have been together for a long time. She knows everything we and I have done since somewhere around 1985 or so. Anytime, in a conversation, some says "remember when..." I immediately turn to her and she feels in the blanks.  I simply can not remember much at all. I used to be able to remember everything. I believe that between my junior and senior year of playing college athletics, multiple concussions later, I somehow lost many contents of my LTM. Today, academically and cognitively, as long as there is a connection, I am good to go. Foer states, "How many worthwhile ideas have gone unthought and connections unmade because of my memory’s shortcomings?" For me, it's just the "remember when..." or the complex trigonometry content (of which I did well in at the time) that eludes me.

For a long time, I've pretty much accepted that I can't remember things.  However, Foer's article got me inspired. He reminds me that ". . . It was simply a matter of learning to ‘think in more memorable ways." He goes on to explain, "Attention, of course, is a prerequisite to remembering. Part of the reason that techniques like visual imagery and the memory palace work so well is that they enforce a degree of mindfulness that is normally lacking. If you want to use a memory palace for permanent storage, you have to take periodic time-consuming mental strolls through it to keep your images from fading. Mostly, nobody bothers. In fact, mnemonics deliberately empty their palaces after competitions, so they can reuse them again and again."

Of course, William James would absolutely agree with the points on attention and capturing the stream of consciousness.  However, James would not necessarily be a huge fan of this type of remember, then forgetting strategy. For me, I'm still trying to gauge the overall value add it Foer's strategies. I do connect with his point on effort and making remembering a priority.

Jeane King-Friedrichs, in Brain-Friendly Techniques for Improving Memory, takes the approaches that I am most comfortable with.  Even though William James was not a teacher, I believe that Friedrichs and James could have "team taught" or collaborated.  Connecting to prior knowledge, developing personal relevance, and making sense of ideas all fit in to what teachers could be developing every day. It is the constructivist approach.  The author does hint at some importance to Foer's aforementioned mnemonic codes, but I highly doubt that mnemonics alone would fit in Friedrichs' plan.

Long Term memory is a topic that I am extremely interested in.  I plan on extending into some of Foer's devices for tasks that need no cognitive processing or meaning making.  However, for tasks that involve meaning making I will still relay on meta-cognition skills and making connections, much like that of Friedrichs.

R8 | Pinker

In Chapter 12 of In Touch with Reality, Stephen Pinker attacks and destroys anti relativism. Anti relativism ideas would lead us to believe that "the mind has no mechanisms designed to grasp reality; all it can do is passively download words, images, and stereotypes from the surrounding culture." I have a real problem with the idea that our mind is passive about anything. Yes we could get back into the discussion on tacit knowledge or habits. However, I still can not go as far to say that those are passive.  Two connections I made with Pinker's thoughts deal with today's students and today's interactivity that we are stil trying to embrace and deal with.

First, as Dr. Mike Wesch discusses in terms of cultural anthropology we do not desire to be passive (http://www.youtube.com/user/mwesch).  We choose to be active thinkers and be involved.  The Internet, and sites like YouTube kind of prove this. Dr. Wesch tells a great story and pokes at some network executives and their wrong guesses.

"You aren't going to turn passive consumers into active trollers on the Internet"  Stephen Weiswasser, ABC Executive

The second connection I made with Pinker in Chapter 12 deals with visual perception. In fact, reading this chapter comes in perfect timing for some very real debates that our happening in schools right now.  Pinker points out; "So demonstrations that refute naive realism most decisively also refute the idea that the mind is disconnected from reality . . .  The fact that our cognitive faculties (like our perceptual faculties) are attuned to the real world is most obvious from their response to illusions: they recognize the possibility of a breach with reality and find a way to get at the truth behind the false impression."  These ideas bring me to the debate on text messaging and student work. It sounds kind of silly, but it is a very real debate. I could not find the exact research cited in the below paragraph,  but it is very interesting. It's certainly not SMS text language but it certainly makes us think about our abilities.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

Now let's think about SMS or "text language." Wikipedia has the primer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_language

In the writing process, does it really matter what our work in progress looks like, as long as we are getting our thoughts on paper? If you answer NO, should we as teachers learn this new shorthand, so that we can help edit our student work? If you answer YES, are you only answering that way because you do not want to learn what our students are teaching? If you answer that YES it does matter that all of our student writing (even rough drafts) be grammatically correct and follow APA format (do we still do that?), then what is your reasoning OR research to back you up? Are you telling journalism professionals that they have bad practices?

I think that Stephen Pinker reminds us that our minds can handle it.  She's never written a book, but my grandmother reminds me that she used to teach "shorthand" to students as a part of their curriculum.  She still uses it sometimes.  Her point is "what's the big deal" if we can "translate" it so that it makes sense and we can use it to get ideas out . . .  then how is it "bad."  An interesting debate none the less.  Pinker puts a nice bow on it by explaining, ". . . the crisis of representation, with its paranoia about the manipulation of our mind by media images, is overblown. People are not helplessly programmed with images; they can evaluate and interpret what they see using everything else they know . . . we can protect ourselves against such manipulation by pinpointing the vulnerabilities of our faculties of categorization, language, and imagery, not by denying their complexity."

R10

I posted this idea or thought thread on one of my other blogs that is focused on learning theory.  However, I couldn't resist posting here as well as I can't help but continue to believe there are major connections here with education technology, how kids play, student development most importantly language and how all those help become the secret sauce in terms of learning.

Lev Vygotsky is one of the most influential constructivists in the field of psychology and learning theory.  He doesn't always make the top ten lists, because is work was not discovered in the US until after his death in 1934 (mainly due to the control of his work by the communist party).  A few of his main tenants were: learning through play, learning through language development, and the zone of proximal development (specifically there is a targeted zone in which maximal learning can happen based on developmental stages of the learning and how far we can push them - if we can identify that zone, the most effective and efficient learning can happen).

At any rate, there is major connection here with education technology specifically for teaching and learning.  Digital Game Based learning comes into the picture as well as technologies that push language development, etc...  Below are a few video and audio snipits that help make this connection.  As you listen or watch, take this submission into consideration.  Are we now able, with the technologies that are readily available able to move past this passive - sit and get - approach to a learners time while being or entertaining themselves?  I believe passive trolling of the Internet was crushed by Web 2.0 and 3.0 and "apps" on mobile devices. (of course this is where O'Reilly's "secret sauce" comes in - building media rich databases that get smarter and better as more people use them).  I believe that passive, mindless TV and movie watching is coming to a end.  More and more technologies are providing for interactivity which equals creative thoughts and actions.  Minds are working more and more.  Think about when you are online, what happens when you have an idea? Answer: you do something about it, you search, you learn more, you create, you post, you grow.  What gave you that idea?  Answer: something that you were engaged in that was linked from something else.  Where is the rigor? Answer: Well, I'd submit that when you are taking ownership for you own learning and engagement of your time... the rigor is at the level you can handle or are prepared to take action on.  And that's where us as teachers can help push, pull, and guide.

1. NPR on Play: Listen to the article or   Read the article (this article does not go directly into theories of Vygotsky, but it screems proof positive)

2. TED Talk on Language Development: Deb Roy & the Birth of a word (now, this is mildly creepy but in a sense, it makes me connect the importance of language to learning and social interaction. AND not just in infants, but in our P-20 learners.  Language and social (f2f, social media, social networking) is hugely important to harness!

3. TED Talk on future learning oportunities:  Lastly, I'll bring in new learning structures and opportunities with Sal Kahn & the Kahn Academy.  Flipping the classroom is something I love.  It's not necessarily ground breaking news but Kahn is doing it with some secret sauce and major scale.  I think the take away here is the art of play, Digital Game Based Learning, social media and have a space (learning opp) where students can explore their own "Zone of Proximal Development" (a la Vygotsky).  Deb Roy & the Birth of a word (now, this is mildly creepy but in a sense, it makes me connect the importance of language to learning and social interaction. AND not just in infants, but all the way through our P-20 learners. Language and social (f2f, social media, social networking) is hugely important to harness!

R7 | Piaget, Airasan, & Walsh

Piaget's principal contributions to constructivism are theories that emphasize learning as having more to do with making meaning than a simple dump of information to the learner (resulting behavior modifications based on stimuli, response, and reinforcements).  Piaget focused on human cognitive development in terms of how children mature, how they respond to previous learning, how they discover learning through experiences, and how interaction with others build learning opportunities. A few of Piaget's learning theory contributions were assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration.  During his time, many behaviorists had not dealt with these ideas.

I find it pretty easy to make connections and form questions relating to Piaget's work.  Specifically in today's educational conversations.  How does Piaget's theories align with Challenge Based Learning (CBL), Problem Based Learning, and Project Based Learning?  Would Piaget add a cognitive development scenario in competency based learning environments?  Since Piaget's constructivism was the most widely accepted learning theory in schools for the past 50+ years, why is achievement and student performance perceived as a failing?  Why has constructivism been the most popular learning theory in education (are there alternative agendas)?

Piaget's stages of development are very descriptive and pronounced. While they are approximate, in terms of age and development, they are criticized somewhat for being so descriptive.  In general, I can make a connection between Piaget and James with his association of ideas and his message to teachers on understanding the art of capturing the stream of consciousness. While James clearly does not define age levels he does emphasize the teacher's ability to capture the stream of consciousness in order to help progress the student's association of ideas through what Piaget defines as stages, with an end result of learning.

In Bart's new "genius school" it formalizes many constructivist catch phrases. Bart doesn't actually have a new teacher but rather a learning coordinator.  There seems to be a lot "make your own rules," he is a "new member of the collective experience," and he is also doing a lot of "desk discovering." Bart's new school certainly attempts to portray a softer self discovery approach to education systems, while infering that this type of approach is only for higher level thinkers. Possibly even for some of Piaget's top level cognitively developed (without the age generalizations of course). Airasan and Walsh would certainly throw up some cautionary flags in Bart's new school. They would caution the time needed for teacher and pupils to learn and practice, they would challenge the "anything-goes" mentality, and they would absolutely have strong issues with the idea that constructivist instructional techniques are the sole means by which students construct meaning.