This newest theory, social constructivism, brings with it a bunch of sub theories. One of them that stood out to me was the idea that "past success served to distract from the ultimate goal." One of my major goals is to get my students to successfully identify principles in the scriptures. I define a principle as a statement of action that can be place in an If/Then format. My students are getting quite good at this but now I need to push them beyond that into an application idea. I need them to be able to identify the principle quickly and then spend the time on the application part of the lesson. If the application doesn't happen then I have largely failed. But I'm seeing that their past success in identifying principles is making it harder for them to go beyond the principle into an application type setting. So that is what my next lesson plan will focus on. As to what real learning is, this would suggest that a student and a teacher can never be satisfied with an initial success. Knowing what 2+2 equals is great but knowing how to perform addition is paramount. I need to go beyond simply identifying the principles already found in the verses, to creating an application that can influence my life. I love this.

M

Ah Bruner. There's a reverend in my town with this last name so I often see his face when I think of this theory. I'm struggling with this one. Perhaps I'm not understanding it all too well but, well let me compare it to a carburetor. The first couple of theories seemed much like a carburetor, they described what learning was and how to do it and offered useful advice/counsel on how to become a much more effective teacher. These latest theories seem to just change one minor part and claim to have a totally different machine. If someone were to show me a carburetor and then change the location of one screw, it would still be a carburetor and I would not feel the need to dissect and re-learn about carburetors all over again. I wonder how many of these theories are just minor modifications, almost not worth calling a theory. I love the idea of hands on experiential learning, but haven't we discussed this multiple times already? Surely I'm missing something, please help me clear this up.

M

Research paper papers

I'm finally whittling down my research paper topic to how cell phone usage in the classroom can be beneficial. Here are the articles I'm planning on using:

http://www.ncsu.edu/meridian/sum2008/roberson/
this first one is an article from Meridian, a publication from NC state

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.108.4410&rep=rep1&type=pdf
this one is a report of "Proceedings of the International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE’02)"
0-7695-1509-6/02 $17.00 © 2002 IEEE

http://centre4.interact.ac.nz/viewfile.php/users/38/1965011121/ICT_PD_Online/ListentotheNatives.pdf
This one comes from the educational leadership journal

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=_CWxEPMmwlMC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1271&dq=cell+phones+in+education&ots=nH8rEv_CNg&sig=_35GpFCcuGncpXqgCULC_AjuDtk#v=onepage&q=cell%20phones%20in%20education&f=false
this is a google book review of a Marc Prensky article entitled "what can you learn from a cell phone, almost anything."

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=HAsfTumtYVoC&oi=fnd&pg=PT6&dq=cell+phones+in+education&ots=faqt3Qmpwd&sig=Yxdj0mz4Vh_UhlE8VhJliMTJ93Q#v=onepage&q=cell%20phones%20in%20education&f=false
this final one is also a google book review that addresses cell phones in developing countries but lends some additional statistics about prevalence of cell phones and individual peoples perception of how important this technology is.

I'll keep you posted as the paper takes shape.

I'm in the process of trying to separate this theory from so many of the others we have already seen. Sometimes it seems like a person wants to get their name out there so they tweak an already viable theory ever so slightly and then claim to have come up with a new theory. This idea of couching things in a story is so similar to teaching using stories and knowing that students learn based on the "story" of their life and showing an abstract thought/principle using a concrete example, such as a story that I wonder if we really need to distinguish between all the similar theories and call them different things. In fact, I almost posted my lesson from a week ago just to see if my idea was accurate, and if the professor was watching, but I didn't. Having said that, I do love stories and will always use them in some way to teach a lesson, I just wonder if I need to have 13 different names for the word story to make it more effective or can I just call it a story?

M

Case based learning. I love the idea! I find that I'm pretty good at telling stories and I'm very comfortable in front of a crowd, even when making a fool of myself, and so story telling works for me. I've seen the stories really captivate my students and bring home an idea or principle in a way that would not have been possible without the story. I do wonder though about the idea that every teaching needs to be couched in a story. I find that if I use any technique too much, even good ones or my favorite ones, it looses its ability to instruct. I think if I were to use a story everyday I would lose some of my students because they would become bored and the predictability would turn them away. I also worry that some of my students would not connect with the theme of my story and that would shut them out as well. So I love stories but I think that every day is too much and the variety needed could really be a drawback.

M