8 Replies
James Brown

Have been a follower of Edutopia for over 3 years now. They always have interesting articles. This particular article backs up the constructionist learning theory that students learn by constructing their own knowledge and it reinforces also reinforces the theory that visual stimulation enhances memory retention of verbal information.

David Becker

@James - I find myself using a constructivist approach almost exclusively now. As I move more into mLearning I'm also learning more about and applying connectivist approaches - social learning theory et al. I love that idea of dual coding and really refining it, finding the balance between just repeating whats on screen (which I hate), adding value to whats on screen (which I love) and balancing cognitive load (by de-synchronizing the audio and visual to such an extent that it actually creates a barrier to encoding)

@Natalie - My pleasure, I think we need to have a bit of a curated clearinghouse thing going on in these forums too, after all there is life beyond articulate (Don't ban me oh wise forum gods!)

@Rebecca - Will check this out. I love that we live in a golden age of convergence/discovery between neuroscience and classical theorists!

Art Sederquist

Thanks for sharing this David.  I'm big fan of consturctivist and connectivist approaches.  Nice to see reference to it here.  

If anyone's interested in learning more about connectivism here's an intro: http://admin.edna.edu.au/dspace/bitstream/2150/34771/1/gs2006_siemens.p 

And regarding multi-modal learning, here's an assessment tool the group might be interested in: http://vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire.  I know a teacher who used this to help identify if his lessons were compatible with a struggling student and how he might tailor them to suit the student's preferred learning modalities.

Jeremy Alger

I'm happy to come across this thread. I am currently studying the Acquisition Metaphor (Behaviourist Cognitivist theory of learning) vs the Participation Metaphor (Constructivist theory of learning) in a postgraduate eLearning class. I have never heard of connectivism and found the article you linked to Art, very interesting.

I agree with the statement "We want content that is current, relevant, and contextually appropriate" and as you alerted to David often today that means via a mobile platform.

From a multimodal point of view I am very excited to see what comes from TED-Ed. .The internet is really encouraging open learning and I'm keen to see what a high profile organisation like TED can contribute to multimodal learning.

Art Sederquist

Jeremy Alger said:

... I have never heard of connectivism and found the article you linked to Art, very interesting.

Jeremy: I dug up Siemen's e-book on his connectivism theory.  You can download it here: https://files.me.com/artsederquist/tnk6tg 

George Siemens released this under Creative Commons Licensing, so it's free to download and share.

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