Educational Pedagogy

Learning doesn't have to be a "loner" experience.

Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky suggested that knowledge is constructed through our interactions with others.
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Learning) leverage our inherent social needs by bringing people together to learn the same material in a virtual group. Students can express what they're feeling and experiencing with others in a shared space, making the learning journey more enjoyable and less daunting.

As people gain confidence, they often enjoy friendly competition with fellow learners to push themselves to compete exercises and assignments. Recognition is part of our need for building self-esteem—and some courses have gamification built in to reward student accomplishments and community helpfulness.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?tag=Social+Learning

This is an interesting intro to social constructionism as it applies to eLearning.  I hope the MOOCs do what they suggest and are not just an attempt to throw jargon out there.

Para docentes

As I visit classrooms, I see teachers working hard at lecturing and students passively receiving.  A few students may be actively taking notes of some kind but most are just listening, maybe.  In John Hattie's , Visible Learning (pp.43-44), one of the most effective predictors of student performance is the student's own reporting of his/her level of knowledge of the content.

If I ask you or your students, "How do you learn," how many of you could clearly articulate this process? If you can, are the strategies you're using the best ones for learning? 

Apply New Learning Often and in Meaningful Contexts

The more you can apply what you’re learning to your every day, the more it’ll stick in your head. The reason is simple. When you’re learning by doing, you’re implementing everything that makes our memory work. When you’re able to connect what you’re learning with a real world task, that forms the bonds in your brain, and subsequently the skills you’re learning will stick around.

We learn best when we have context, and that applies to new skills as much as it does random facts in school. That’s why something like the transfer of learning is helpful when your learning a new skill. This means you’re applying your new skills in your day to day life in a context that matters. (http://lifehacker.com/the-science-behind-how-we-learn-new-skills-908488422)

It is never too late to learn...

A great disucssion on on the connection between doing and learning (retention).

"When you’re learning by doing, you’re implementing everything that makes our memory work. When you’re able to connect what you’re learning with a real world task, that forms the bonds in your brain, and subsequently the skills you’re learning will stick around."

#SCEUNED15,  el reto es salir de nuestas zonas de confort,

For both students and teachers.

If it feels uncomfortable - you're on the right track!

Measure the wrong things and you'll get the wrong behaviors." This simple statement succinctly characterizes why the American education system continues beating its head against the wall.

Throughout education, an increasingly rigid, closed loop of assessment is systematically making schools worse: Define things children should know or be able to do at a certain age; design a curriculum to instruct them in what you've decided they should know; set benchmarks; develop tests to see if they have learned what you initially defined; rinse and repeat.

This narrow, mechanistic approach to education does not correspond to the reality of child development and brain science, but the metrics and assessment train charges down the track nevertheless.

So what's wrong with that, you might ask? Isn't school about teaching kids stuff and then testing them to see what they've learned? In a word, "No." It simply doesn't work, especially with young children.

As Boston College Professor Peter Gray wrote in a recent Psychology Today article:

Perhaps more tragic than the lack of long-term academic advantage of early academic instruction is evidence that such instruction can produce long-term harm, especially in the realms of social and emotional development.