Shepp GeekTech – A Tech Geek’s Blog

Well, just last week I finished assignment #2 in the MDDE 603 course. It was a collaborative assignment that I worked on with three other people. It was a different experience doing this type of project in a distance learning course. We used e-mail as the primary collaborative tool. It went really well because the people I was working with were very efficient and had a good work ethic. This is my second experience working with others in a distance education environment and I enjoyed it even more than I did the first time.

The assignment involved applying learning theories to suggest changes in a distance education course. The theories we chose were Cognitive information processing (CIP), Ausubel’s meaningful learning theory, schema theory, and I chose constructivism. One of the complaints I have about the masters program I am doing is that it does not provide the means to participate online using synchronous technology (i.e. Elluminate Live!). I was pleased with the assignment overall and I hope we get a good mark.

Now I am starting the unit about motivation as a part of the learning process. Being a junior high teacher I have first-hand experience about the effect of motivation on learning. I hoping to learn a bit about how I can better motivate my own students.

I have been reading a lot about learning theories and for the most part it is interesting. I keep wondering how this generation of students (k-12) are growing up in a digital world and how that has changed the way people learn? Many teenagers use IM to communicate with their friends and handle 5, 8, 10 or more converstaions at one time. I don’t like using IM myself and can only handle 1 or two conversations at a time. A lot of teenagers listen to music and/or tv while studying. I always used to think a quiet environment was best but surprisingly it can be distracting for some students who need some noise on to study. It makes sense when you think about selective attention. By having their MP3 players on and listening to tunes some students can concentrate on their studies even better because the music helps keep them focussed by elimanating other distractions and by listening to music they block everything out and can concetrate on their work. Is this the digital learner that our society is breeding?