Mind map summary of Mark Prenskys article 'Digital Natives, Digital immigrants'

Assessment Post 4 - Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy

Blooms taxonomy shows the levels of thinking from basic to higher order thinking. The skills involved in remembering and understanding are quite limited compared to creating or evaluating. In the past, schools have concentrated mainly on the lower order skills such as understanding and applying, yet rarely reaching evaluating or creating. In light of Bloom's research, many teachers are realising that these higher order skills are needed to create true deep learning in students. The idea of creating is new to Bloom's taxonomy as it used to stop at evaluating. However, through further research and study, it became obvious that creating needed more skill and higher thinking that it became vital as a part of a well rounded, deep learning education. It should be remembered however that remembering and understanding are both vitally important still as they build the bases and foundation of learning, thus why they form the foundation of the pyramid.

Assessment Post 3 - Lev Vygotsky

Lev Vygotsky

Vygotsky's research concerned a child's development through social interaction and its importance in defining their actions and behaviours. Vygotsky observed how higher mental functions developed through social interactions with significant people in a child's life, particularly parents, but also other adults. Through these interactions, a child came to learn the habits of mind of their culture, including speech patterns, written language, and other knowledge through which the child learns to develop their own skills.

Vygotsky (1978) states:

"Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first,
on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people
(interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This
applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation
of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between
individuals."

Reflective Ideas

The idea central to Vygotsky's theory is that development occurs through social
interaction with adults and other children. This means that childrens
social interaction at school is vital and must be nurtured. Activites such as group work may be helpful in this situation as the interaction involved in it means that the children are engaging in thinking together and often help each other develop necessary skills. An interesting side effect of this would be that the students learn social skills and social roles ( such as a leader, thinker, doer etc in a group situation) in the process of learning academic information.

Assessment Post 2 - William Glasser

According to William Glasser, there are 5 motivating factors to learn. To fulfil these 5 basic needs, students need to feel love and belonging and this is vitally important to their development.
These include

1. Shelter/protection/survival
2. Love/friendships/relationships
3. Fun
4. Power
5. Freedom

The Ten Axioms of Choice Theory

• The only person whose behaviour we can control is our own.
• All we can give another person is information.
• All long-lasting psychological problems are relationship problems.
• The problem relationship is always part of our present life.
• All we do is behave.
• What happened in the past has everything to do with what we are today, but we can only satisfy our basic needs right now and plan to continue satisfying them in the future.
• We can only satisfy our needs by satisfying the pictures in our Quality World.
• All behaviour is Total Behaviour and is made up of four components: acting, thinking, feeling and physiology.
• All Total Behaviour is designated by verbs and named by the part that is the most recognizable.
• All Total Behaviour is chosen, but we only have direct control over the acting and thinking components. We can only control our feeling and physiology indirectly through how we choose to act and think
  
  

Assessment Post 1 - John Hattie

According to Hattie, the influences on a child's education differ greatly in importance. The students themselves contribute 50% to their education, the teachers 25% and the remaining 25% is influenced by their home, school and peers. Hattie believes the 6 biggest motivations for a student to learn are:

• feedback
• prior cognitive ability (such as IQ score)
• instructional quality
• instructional quantity (how much and how long they are taught)
• direct instruction (interaction in classroom learning)
• acceleration.

http://www.acer.edu.au/workshops/documents/HattieSlides.pdf
http://www.teacherstoolbox.co.uk/downloads/managers/GeoffonHattie.doc

John Hatties ideas are important for teachers to study and understand as it gives an insight into what effect outside influences can have on how much students learn and thus how to affect their potential grades for the better. Feedback is obviously an important point as the child learns what mistakes they have made and where their strengths and weaknesses are. It is interesting though that this is above instructional quality as many people believe the abilities of the teacher to be the most important thing.