You are on page 1of 1

1.

I cant really say that I lean towards just a single learning theory. I learn with behaviourism,
because I tend to work harder and make things stick to memory more when I know there is some
form of reward at the end. For instance, sometimes my high school French teacher would split the
class into two teams and we would play Jeopardy against each other. I was more motivated to
commit the information to memory so that I could win.
Also, I really like when concepts are more organized into things like mind maps or organizers
(cognitivism). A good example of this was when I was making my TPACK Venn diagram for Module
4. I more clearly understood each part of the TPACK model and where I fit myself into it by
organizing the facts.
Constructivism is also very important to me because I can immerse myself into something
and actually familiarize myself with it. For example, I havent done my IPT yet or done any of my
classes on how to assess, so I am not too confident in how to teach because I have not actually had
the practice. But as soon as I start to teach in the classroom I will get better and better every day.
Connectivism is also very important to me, especially now in university. I have used Google
to search up countless math concepts and questions in order to learn them better. Sometimes just
one persons teaching me isnt enough and I need to get different points of view on the subject. So I
guess connectivism may actually be the most important out of the four learning theories to me.

2.
Connectivism is the most important for me and there are many ways to use connectivist
theory in the classroom.
I was never really good at Social Studies in high school, but one way I could have been more
interested in it was if my teacher had used technology a little more. A good way could have been
getting the students to research online for a eugenics paper and get in touch over the internet with
experts or survivors.
In an art class, a teacher could ask me to create a PLN (as I have done for this EDU 210 class)
or to use an existing one to connect with modern artists or to research older art work.
A math example would be to use YouTube videos to show different examples of how to simplify
polynomials. A final example would be for a French teacher to set up students with pen pals from
Qubec or France and they could communicate by e-mail. The native English-speaker could practice
their French and the native French-speaker could practice English.
I have had some great use of technology and connectivist tools in my personal experiences,
but now I know that they are more important than I realized before. It is a good tool for teachers to
know that knowledge does not exist in the heads of learners or instructors but through the
variety of connections established amongst students, instructors, and technologies (Academic
Partnerships, 2013).

Reference:
Academic Partnerships (2013). Rethinking Your Online Classroom with Connectivism. [online]
Facultyecommons.org. Available at: http://facultyecommons.org/rethinking-your-online-classroom-
with-connectivism/ [Accessed 26 May. 2014].

You might also like