Sarah's+Page

My classroom wikis: redhouserocks.wikispaces.com redhouserocks15.wikispaces.com

“What does this article teach us about learning?” - About Community space “How do I understand learning to occur?”

Learning is about more than just memorizing facts. It's one thing to know the date of an important event and it's another to understand how that event changed a country or the world. I found it interesting when the article talked about how there is a difference between "usable knowledge" and a "list of disconnected facts." The core subjects I teach are Language Arts an Social Studies and I don't give many tests in either subject. I teach them how to find the information, the facts, that they need in order to convey the information in an organized and meaningful way.

I think learning occurs when the subject or the skill is meaningful to the student. This makes teaching a huge challenge because the interest and skill level of students is so varied. Not every student is going to be interested in everything taught and it may not become meaningful to them until later in their life. Just because the Ministry outcomes state that in grade 7 students should be able to do a,b, and c, does not mean that every child in my grade 7 class is ready to learn those things. So what about them? If I teach who I am and what I like then I'm not reaching every student and having said that, there is one of me and 60 of them, I'm seriously out-numbered. So like I said before, I try to vary what I teach and the way I teach enough in hopes that every student will find something meaningful and that from that experience other knowledge and understanding is constructed. I think that if I can at least teach my students to be independent and resourceful, that in the end they will do just fine.

Socio-Constructivism What is the value of thinking about socio-constructivism in integrating technology into education? It's valuable because socio-constructivism focuses on scaffolding student learning. Students have to be ready to learn something and since all students develop at different rates not every student will be ready to learn what the teacher wants them to know. This theory allows the students who are ready to learn to then take on a leadership role and in turn secure their own learning and knowledge by teaching and supporting peers.

Where does knowledge live/reside? Knowledge resides in books, internet, people's heads.

What does it mean to know something? To know something means that one can create: ideas, products, interactions. So you have knowledge because you "know" something or...because you know how to access it...or build from or...? I think it's both. One can know something because they have memorized or have completed the task enough times to become an expert and one can know how to access the information that will help to complete the task at hand or answer the question posed to them.