Personal Learning Theory

What? So I took the quiz and I have a dilemma or my math skills are horrible. I think it could be a little due to the latter. I am classical conditioned to think that I hate math I guess. Well, I have a three way tie between all of the learning theories. So I guess I don't know which one I like the best. I saw parts of some that I liked and parts of the others that seemed a little odd. So lets go down the list. Piaget was right when he said that people learn from their schemes. We all have assimilation and accommodation happen in our lives. So I agree with that. I don't know how I feel about the sensorimotor stage of his theory. He seems to have been headed the right way however Vygotski was cool too.

I think Vygoyski was right on when he discusses internalization. A person needs to bring outside influences in to learn, I agree. I don't know if inner speech is going to help someone learn any differently than using your mind as a tool instead. The zpd is weird, how does someone come up with a term like that? Scaffolding is important though. I think I agree more with Vygotski than the others though.

Erickson stayed up too late working on some of his stuff, but I do think there are issues in life if people do not complete a stage of Moral Development. it is noticeable all around us with trust vs. mistrust all the way up to integrity vs. despair. My father has issues with the last stage and so he is retired early yet hurting in life still.

I don't think emotional intelligence is my cup of tea. It seems to me that if a person is emotionally sound they can still have problems learning. I do agree it plays a part, but I will not base my teaching on emotional learning.

I know there is an information processing method of learning somewhere, it is cool that someone has even tried to take on the brain and find out what they have about memory. I know I have a hard time with retrieval of people's names, but I can remember every hardwood floor I have ever done. It seems the information needs to be stored somewhere. Learning has to be good for something, it blows me away thinking what part of the brain does what in the process though.

Knowledge construction and higher order thinking is something that I will use in my future classroom. the brain is there waiting for something to challenge it with, why not test it. I figure the more it is tested, the more it learn. It has to be that way. the only way higher order thinking can be done is by following the discovery learning and hands on things and then try and tie them in with the rest of the world. That seems like it would stay in the brain better than doing a problem on a piece of paper and then trying how to remember to do it the next day.

Behaviorism is one I have a problem with, yet I still had a tie on the quiz I did. Is it all a farce, i don't think that either. I think that behavior can teach you how to act. I feel it is more an outward learning. Classical conditioning happens, I will not say it doesn't operant conditioning as well. We teach ourselves how to act in a certain situation and the brain takes over. Is this learning? I think it is not learning. I think it is action that the brain decides is OK. Does it really teach a person something? I don't think I will be able to use it in the classroom for anything other than classroom management.

I like social caognitivism. I think we are able to track our own learning. and model our learning appropriately, but I do not think that it can stand alone. I think it needs to be paired with one of the other theories to make it work correctly. it can be the best way of learning is combining all of them in some way. That is what I need to learn to do to be a successful teacher.

so what? I think a person learns by collecting data and storing it in the brain. I do think we can store information, we can grab that information from wherever it is living inside the brain. Learning is getting the information in the brain. the brain is amazing with all of its' neurons and dendrites jumping across synapses to form pathways. these pathways are formed by some stimulus. Which stimulus drives nueroplastisticity? I think information is brought into the brain in many different ways. It is cognitive, it is phschosocial, schemas are formed and somehow they are pulled from its' resting place when something somewhat resembles it. Elaboration occurs and learning takes place. I think schemas can be built and added by many different stimuli. Other people can help it by scaffolding or being an apprentice. It is all adding to a schema. Behaviorism is adding to schema in some form or another. With all of them learning takes place, but with different views of how.

Now what? I will take the information I have learned and I will build on existing schema to create learning. I will do it in a variety of ways that will help the students be motivated. Learning all has to do with wanting to take in more information and have it create more pathways through the brain. I believe this can be done by using all of the techniques. I will discover which ones to use where.