Week 19

learning Theories:

 behaviorism, constructivism, connectivism- Many components have to be taken into account for learning to happen: student learning style, temperament, age, environment, culture, finantial, knowlege of technology.
Are the learning theories important to learn? Yes, but we have several examples that learning happens without the formal knowledge of those theories. Learning can happen when we provide an active, social engaging and non-threating environment to  learners. Learning should be contextual based. We have several examples of contextually based learning through out the world:

Ex:
In Brazil, children learn to play in a carnival band with out going to a formal school. Learning is passed on from the musician in the communities that live in the favelas (shanty town).
The children also learn how to play Soccer- no shoes, no club. Players find their own soccer field, learn the rules of the game with out this established structure of a club culture. The community gets together and play rounds usually older kids teens or twenty year old watch as little kids play. The older kids take over later at night when the little kids go home. It's a pass down system where untrained teachers teach.

Tribes in Africa, where the learning comes from the elders in a community, it is an important social component.This brings the elders into the community as an important factor. This is a good example of connectivism.
This is a fun video done by a tourist who asked specific questions about tribe and wife coming from other villages and how many wives the men can have. 

 Creation of the Pyramids in Egypt- is another example of people making amazing monuments without computers and calculators and the formal learning western stile. It should be noted Egyptians did have training for boys who learned Hieroglyphs easily. All the people had a specific job within the town they learned their specialization from childhood.  This would be an example of Behaviorism mixed with vocational learning.

But one can say in these same countries their is a high illiteracy rate and poverty, yet that does not mean that people cannot learn.There are many examples of contextual learning that is academic and includes the three R's eventually going beyond the basics.

In the US there are schools implementing blended learning programs where students use there skills such as reading comprehension and writting to study other courses and integrated into the classic English class. For Example at Gunn high school they have blended learningcourses named American studies. They read books and the history research will be based on the era of the book it was written in. This gives background knowledge about what was happening during that time in history. This gives more depth to the topic.

As I was thinking about blended learning and technology I found this well written article from the university of Wisconsin. They incorporate the three learning methods as well as technology.
-Article about different learning theory and online learning Madison University:http://academictech.doit.wisc.edu/blend/design/principles

Drummers and soccer ( by cause and affect foundation)