Week 1

Wow, one week down and only eleven more to go. I am exactly halfway through my Bachelor of Learning Management in Early Childhood and it feels like I am on the home stretch which is great. While I have had a lot of experience with ICT’s in both my personal and professional life, I have not had any experience blogging so I am keen to develop new skills in this area throughout the duration of this course.

The course materials focused on learning styles and learning theories this week. These topics have been a focus of several of my other courses so it was nice to be able to refresh on these topics. I have also had direct experience working with students with diverse learning styles while on prac.

I looked over the VAK and Felder and Solomon learning style taxonomies and found some visual resources that summarised them for me to look back at later. I have come across these and several other learning style taxonomies in courses that I have done previously there seems to be as many different models as there are learning styles so there is something out there for everyone which is helpful to know as a teacher because there are endless amounts of resources for different learners.

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As a Pre-Service learning manager it is important to realise the value of having a diverse range of learning styles in your classroom to provide realistic learning to students and to prepare them for the real world where not everybody has the same strengths, weaknesses and abilities. Real life does not have a one size fits all design so there is no reason that there should be a one size fits all design in the classroom.

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I took the Gardner’s Theory Multiple Intelligences test and I am mainly a musical, interpersonal and linguistic learner, these strengths influence me as a learner because I find that my favourite subjects include English, music and classes where there is group work or opportunity for interaction with my peers while I find that I do not enjoy technical subjects such as Maths and Science as much. I haven’t really thought about how my preferred learning styles influence me as a teacher so I might make a note of it and think about it when I am back at prac.

Retrieved from: http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/questions/results.cfm

Looking over the learning theories from this week’s engagement I found that all four of the theories have been touched on earlier in my degree but it was different looking at them from and IT and 21^st century perspective rather than just looking at them as a whole.

Connectivism and constructivism strike me as the two learning theories that work well with 21^st century learners as well as integration with IT because we live in an age where we are constantly connected to each other by the touch of a button. Social constructivism through the use of blogs, wiki’s, discussion forums and even personal text messages are valuable tools for students to corroborate with and learn from each other and to confirm their learning. Connectivism is also valid for 21^st learners because it is not essential to know everything but rather to know where to get that information from and how to get it. 

Until next week...