Behaviorism in Today's Classroom

Behaviorism in Today’s Classroom

Behaviorist learning theory is being applied daily in my classroom. My school is using Glencoe Mathematics Applications and Concepts Course 2 for the seventh grade and Course 3 for the eight grades. Glencoe provides a vast assortment of technology based learning tools. The book in its entirety is on a website which includes a personal tutor; practice quizzes/test additional examples, and much more. Dr. Orey said that Behaviorist Learning Theory is still being widely applied even though it has fallen out of favor. I have reviewed my textbooks and agree with Dr. Orey that behaviorist learning is widely used.

            In the required reading Using Technology with classroom Instruction, Chapter 10   “Homework and Practice give students a chance to review and apply what they have learned.” The Glencoe books have student resources on-line for every chapter. Students are assigned homework that they must email the results to the teacher which is Programmed instruction – online tutorials.  In mathematics, there is a place for drill and practice because “practice makes permanent.”

How the Brain Learns

How the Brain Learns

After 15 years of teaching, I find difficulty articulating why some students grasp abstract mathematical concepts while others struggle to understand the simplest concepts.

What I do know is that emotion can play a significant role in memory. Dr. Wolfe talks about emotion impeding or enhancing memory and I have found that there is some credibility in this theory.
When I teach a lesson with humor or as my colleagues call it, attics, students remember more and tell their parents everything that happened in class. On the other hand, when I lecture, students seem to be comatose and remember almost nothing.

Mathematics does require Procedural Memory to comprehend the methods needed to solve word problems.  For years I have argued with colleagues that rote memory is still necessary for learning math, while others steadfastly argue that rote memory is no longer a part of learning. Dr. Wolfe makes a point about rote memory in that practice makes permanent. For example, memorizing the multiplication table requires rote memory.

Teaching with visual aids is an excellent method of keeping students’ attention and engaging them in question and answer secessions’.

According to ScienceDaily (Oct.20, 2000) “Neuroscientists also theorize that higher forms of learning occur in the cerebral cortex. Evidence from the study supports that theory. “
Teachers need to understand how the brain works to better serve their students.

Reflexión sobre Blogs, Wikis y Podcasts

Reflexión sobre Blogs, Wikis y Podcasts translation can be found at http://www.microsofttranslator.com/

Understanding the Impact of Technology on Education, Work, and Society is a course that should be required for all in-service teachers. This course gives its students real-life experiences with collaboration, developing Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, Communication Rubics, and practical applications.

The activity that is the most stressful yet collaborative is the Wiki, because it required students to think differently about working together to produce a product. My first thought was to have a group leader and then to develop tasks for co-workers. This is 20th Century 'division of labor' methodology for creating a product.  In this model, there is a boss and co-workers with each co-worker in a cubicle making their ingredient but not knowing  about or having input to the other ingredients of the final product.

The Wiki activity gave me a peek at 21st Century group work.  It reminds of the  TV show Criminal Minds, where every team member contributes to the effort, yet no one seems to have a defined role.
If educators could change the classroom environment, so that no one has a defined role, yet the team moves forward toward a stated goal, I believe this model would be in-line with 21st Century collaboration.

Teaching students to develop this type of collaboration will require educators to develop scenarios that engage students on all levels of the Revised Blooms' Taxonomy. The revised taxonomy ask the question, can the student create a new product or point of view?"  Perhaps this should be changed to "can the students create a new product or point of view?"

I have always had the opinion that teachers lecture too much. I remember in middle school and secondary school, wishing that we could do something other than listening.
I plan to use a dynamic approach to teaching with the help of Dr. Richard Felder's model of instruction.
In his video "Introduction to Learning Styles", http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Learning_Styles.html
I am impressed by his four constructs, sensing - intuitive, visual - verbal, active - reflective, and global - sequential. I am going to use Dr. Felder's model as a starting point to develop my own teaching style.

My long term goal is to rework my Education Philosophy to include more student authentic digital work and secondly to rely more on students engaged in scenarios. This can be accomplished by using, Blogs, Wikis, and Podcast. All of the activities in this course will be used in my classroom to transform the learning environment.
Finally, several answers on the checklist have changed, beginning with modeling reflective practices and I using the blog to have students reflect on what they have learned. Another change is providing students with opportunities for sharing and presenting information by using the Podcasting site that was during this course. Lastly, collaboating with students to explore and evaluate new emerging technologies with the help of the Wiki site.

In conclusion, this course is exactly what I have been looking forward to enhance my teaching.

Student Technology Survey

I enjoyed doing this activity. I surveyed 120 students and not surprisingly, video games was the activity that students spent the most time doing. :(

So, do digital natives have a leg-up on digigtal immigrants?

My podcast address is   http://quest2001.podomatic.com/.


Here is a list of the questions:

1. How much time do you spend watching TV?
2. How much time do you spend talking/texting?
3. How much time do you spend using a computer to complete homework?
4. How much time do you spend surfing the web?
5. How much time do you spend chatting with friends via text or Instant Messing?
6. How much time do you spend playing video games per day?
7. Do you have a home computer with internet access?
8. Are you interested in using different technologies for social and academic purposes?
9. At what age did you begin using a computer?
10. Do you feel that you are more knowledgeable about computers, cell phones, and other technologies than your parents?
11. Do you feel that you are more knowledgeable about computerts, cell phones, and other technologies than some of your teachers?
12. Which of these do you use most often, Facebook, Twditter, Texting, Blogging, e-mailing, Cell phone (talking), playing video games?


i

Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Do you ever feel as though you are behind the technology power curve as a teacher?

After reading Partnership for 21st Century Skills, I felt like the world has past me by, even though I consider myself tech-savvy and technology-wise up-to-date because of an Associate Degree in Media Integration Technology, a certified computer technicial, twenty-three years of military service working with communication computers and teaching computer technology in a middle school.

Somehing that I would like to do is visit the School of the Future (SOF) in New York City.

I would like to learn more about the demographics of the student body and teachers.
Don't get me wrong, I think the SOF is a great idea and I certainly believe that America needs to change the way we teach our youth.

But, in the back of my mind, I keep thinking about demographics because it is so important toward student success - parent/teacher communications and support.

With that said, the video by Ben Mook caught my attention because of the real-life activity.  I have taught slope in my math class but I never thought about using stairs as a manipulative. Since our school doesn't have stairs, that's probably why I did not think of using them. We do have bleachers which can serve the same purpose.

The use of the stairs was matched with the NY City compliant codes. Why didn't I think of something like that?

Another eye opener was the iGeneration phrase and using voice threads to produce authentic student work. This (i) seems to be the indicator that separates digital learners from the rest of us.

I am glad to read that P21 has not abandoned the 3 R's, but expanded the skill set to include the 4C's, communications, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity.

If you are familiar with Gaggle, which is a program similar to our course where students can blog, collaborate, use a homework drop box, and other features. I started to teach students how to use it, and most of them seem to accept this technology as a normal part of life.
This brings me to teacher professional development. The P21 e-paper addresses pre-service teacher training in information and communications technology and "just in time" preparation for in-service teachers.
The problem is the lack of trainers to teach in-service teachers.
At my school we have teachers that have taught for forty years and their sentiment is that a chalk board was good enough for them and it's good enough for their students.

I have spoken with my colleagues and some of them - in mathematics - think that the use of technology is hampering the development of student math skills because they rely on a calculator to do the simplest task. In other words, students feel that, "why should I memorize the multiplication table when I can use a calculator"?
And yes, to some degree, I agree we my math colleagues that students have become too dependent on technology to the point that they cannot solve problems without technology.

There are some things where rote memory is a good thing.

Here is an example that some of you may have experienced, a student needs to call their parents, so they come to you and ask for their parents phone number. I ask the student, "why don't you know your parents number", and they reply, " It's in my cell phone and I don't have my phone with me". This is not an isolated event.

I remember growing up, and knowing your street address, telephone number and how to tell time on an analog clock were taught in school at the elementary level. 
I have "digital natives" that cannot tell time on an analog clock that does not have the numbers.

                        What are the implications of the digital age?
         In summary,  my theory is that humans and machines are becoming integrated to the point that humans will not be able to function without a machine. When the power goes off in the classroom, what do you do when your lesson is totally dependent on electronics? I have witness some teachers stop teaching, because they had no back-up plan. And students do the same thing, "I could not do my homework because my computer crashed and I could not access the on-line math book". My reply is, "why didn't you use the written textbook that I gave you?"
Students look at me as if I said something offensive.

What my students want to blog about.

To find enlightenment I asked my students what they would like to blog about.

To get their feed back, I went to their School Gaggle accounts and started a blog. I asked two questions: the first is:

"I am interested in knowing what students would enjoy doing in math. Please provide your comments".

Since I am the only teacher at my school with a student blog, I had no one to offer advice.

But, my students have given me what I was looking for, and that is 'What do they think is important'.

 The downside is that I missed my suspense for the Master's Course, but I feel that what I did is relevant and a real life application of technology.

Here are a few replies:  (please excuse the spelling)

I would enjoy doing angles and adding fractions. I like math because Math helps you with money and shopping. Math is in everything you do like running miles, weghing things and building things.


 i sorta like math. But its sometimes hard. I like working on the computer and what we are working on now!

In math I like the games on the computer that we play . I don't really like all the work that we have to do tho . I like the subject (GCF) we are working on now . It is really easy .

Well math has always been my favorite subject. So learning more stuff just makes it better. sometimes some things are kinda hard. But knowing I have a teacher who can explain it very well makes it better. I also love the computer math games you allow us to play. Those are my favorite(:

After reading student's blog replies, I feel better about what I have been doing in class and decided to combine my teaching of the TI-84 Calculator with blogging. I did this with the following question.

The second question is:
 Suppose your calculator will not allow you to enter three numbers into the GCD function. How could you still use your calculator to find the GCF of the three following numbers: 4,896; 2,364; and 656? EXPLAIN your strategy and why it works.

Students loved this question because they were able to blog their ideas and develop the best way to explain their strategy.

Here are a few replies: (please excuse the spelling)

well to being with it would be hard beacuse u can not do 3 numbver on the computer so i woukld just do it on papper and have 3 cirlces and use the rules for the gcf and go with that and try to find my answerWell I would first multiply any possible ways to get the GCD. Then I would  put the to numbers in the caculator and use the way that mr. Garret showed us in class. After finding the GCDs I would add the other number to the GCD on the caculator and press enter and then GCDs should pop up.
The following is one of my favorite replies.

The first thing I would do is take the two biggest numbers and find the GCF then with the GCF of those two numbers , I would take the last number left and with find the GCF of all of the numbers .

Struggling to find math blogging ideas.

I look at other peoples blogs and try to find a common ground for having a math blog, but my mind is thinking about numbers and how do you get students to write about them.

Stuck.

Changing how our brains are wired.

I have a theory about today's children. That is, their brains are being wired differently than past generations, because of technology.
They seem to see the world in terms of push a button and "things" happen. It doesn't seem to matter what is happening behind the button, just that they are getting the desired results.
The only people that understand what is happening behind the buttons are engineers, scientist or technologist. So, there are two sets of people, users (common people without degrees in technology, but they know what buttons to push), and developers (skilled people with the knowledge and or degrees who can bring about advancements in technology.
With each advancement comes a new "button" that users must understand what the effect will be. Therefore, they (the users) are considered to be tech savvy.
Just my theory.