Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology Course Reflections

After completing this course my personal learning theory involves a combination of behaviorist, cognitive, constructionist, and social learning theories. I believe they all play a role in learning. Behaviorism is the basis for motivation to learn. For a learner to have a desire to learn it needs to be rewarding to them in some way. Cognitism describes how as new knowledge is gained it is processed and organized into schemas the are developed based on our individual experiences which help us create understanding and meaning out of that knew knowledge. Constructionism is the creation of experiences with the new knowledge and the processing of that knowledge through building artifacts to represent the knowledge. Through these experiences and building processes knowledge is processed in many in depth and meaningful ways that help to make it memorable. Learning through socialism allows the learner to share their ideas about the knowledge and gain other's perspectives on them. Social learning also helps us process and reflect on the knowledge as it pertains to our society and to develop a common knowledge to help us further the collective knowledge of our society.

One change I plan to make to my instructional practices include finding more ways to include constructionism in my classroom. I want to make my classroom more student centered by decreasing the amount of time I am feeding information to my students and increasing the amount of time my students are physically manipulating that information in building that information into projects. One technology tool I learned about in this course that I would like to use for this is the building of concept maps. I would also like to use more virtual lab and field trip experiences than what I currently use to create more complete and meaningful experiences for my students.

To pursue my goal of increasing constructionism in my instruction, I plan to include at least one technology project for every unit I teach. The projects may include putting together power point reports, constructing concept maps, wiki projects, or creating a pod-cast.

To pursue my goal of increasing the number of virtual experiences I provide my students, I plan to use web searches to locate one additional on-line virtual experience each school term for each course I teach.

Generating and Testing Hypotheses and Constructivist/Constructionist Learning

As a science teacher, I am very familiar of the process of generating and testing hypotheses. During this process predictions are made based on prior knowledge, these predictions are then tested and data is gathered and analyzed to determine if the original ideas are supported or not, and these ideas are then modified to accomodate the new knowledge gained.

Generating and testing hypotheses is an example of constructionist learning because knowledge is being built and remodeled. Dr. Orey describes constructionist learning as knowledge being assimilated and accomodated into schemas (Laureate, 2009). Hypotheses are generated based on the knowledge already present in the learner's personal schema. When the hypotheses are tested the new knowledge being gained may or may not fit into the schema and is accomodated by adding to that schema, adjusting that schema, or developing a new schema.

Laureate Education, Inc. (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. DVD.

Virtual Field Trips, Concept Maps, and Cognitive Learning Theory

As described by Dr. Orey, cognitive learning theory has to do with how information is processed by and stored in the brain. For learning to occur information has to be taken into short term memory and ingrained into long term memory which requires practice and repetition. Information can be stored in long term memory as declarative information, procedural information, and episodic information. The strongest memories are procedural and episodic. (Laureate, 2009).

Virtual field trips and concept mapping tools are a few tools that can be used to increase learning. They require the learner to use the declarative information they have recieved in procedural and episodic learning rather than just learn it declaratively through repetition. Virtual field trips may not be as good as an actual field trip to experience and interact with the knowledge, but can be very useful when the logistics of taking an actual field trip can not be met. Virtual field trips can allow the learner to actually experience what is going on which applies to episodic learning. Creating concept maps are useful in helping the learner to interconnect the information they are learning thereby increasing the ways the information can be recalled. They also have to think about the information more critically and it becomes intertwined with the procedure of linking it in a concept map.


Laureate Education, Inc. (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. DVD.

Behavioral Learning Theory

Dr. Orey describes behaviorism as being as certain behaviors being enforced through reward and others being discouraged through punishment (Laureate, 2009). As a teacher I would like my students to be intrinsically motivated by the reward of learning rather extrinsic motivation by being given a grade or prize for completing a learning activity. I have found this challenging as many of my students tend to be concerned about their grade, but not concerned so much about learning the material. It is hard to motivate them to complete an assignment for the learning aspect without awarding points for the assignment and have it contribute directly to their grade.

Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski make the generalization that students do not always realize the importance of effort in learning and recomend teaching this to students. They suggest doing this by having students keep track of the amount of effort they put into learning activities such as taking, organizing, and using class notes, class participation, and homework assignments as well as test scores, and charting the results so that they can see how their effort corresponds with their achievment. (2007).

The strategy of teaching students the importance of effort in their learning correlates with behavioral learning because the students learn that putting effort into the assigned learning activities provides the reward of learning and doing well on the test.


Laureate Education, Inc. (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. DVD.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Denver, CO: McREL.

Course Reflections

During my participation in Walden's Understanding the Impact of Technology course, I have learned alot about the types of Web 2.0 tools that are available for use in learning and how to use these tools. Blogging, wiki's, and pod-casting were all new things for me that I was able to gain experience with through this course. I have gained enough knowledge and experience with blogging and audio pod-casting that I can stop thinking so much about how to do them, but focus on how to use them with my students to enhance their learning. I gained at least some basic experience with wiki's and though I am still not very comfortable using them, I feel like I have some basics to explore the use of them further on my own.

A few ways in which I feel I can continue to expand my knowledge of technology integration include continuing my education with Walden University as well as doing more exploring on my own. I can work on exploring the use of wiki's further. I am also interested in experimenting with video capabilities and uploading video. I have a digital camera that takes video, but I have not yet tried to upload videos to the computer or to the web. Attempting to do this is one thing I want to try in the very near future.

My first long-term goal after completeing this course includes incorporating blog assignments into my curriculum to encourage critical thinking about the core concepts being taught. I have already taken the first steps in doing this by setting up a class blog page for my biology course and incorporated a blogging assignment into my last unit. I plan on slowly incorporating more blogging assignments into my lesson plans, by creating at least one blogging assignment for each unit. I also plan to create a course blog for Anat/Phys class and begin incorporating blogging assignments with them as well.

My second long-term goal is to explore additional use of web 2.0 tools in my classroom. I plan on spending more time exploring the possibilities of wiki's to see if I could find a way to use them in the future. I want to be able to create some sort of web page that students would be able to upload projects to or create projects on, whether that be through a wiki or through an actual web page, which is another thing I currently have no experience with. I am also interested in incorporating pod-casting into my lessons as well, but before I can do so, I need to do some brainstorming on how I would use the pod-casting for student learning.

Reaction to 21st Century Learning Partnership web site

Being a teacher in West Virginia, the second state to adopt the 21st Century Learning Program statewide, I was already at least somewhat familiar with some of the content contained within this site. Seeing how this program has been transforming my school over the past few years has me excited to see that more states have been adopting this program as well. The changes have not been taking place over night, and more teacher training and classroom internet access is needed to really effectively incorporate this program, but the change is happening and it has been allowing us to access many new devices and updates to our aging buildings to bring our facilities into the digital age. Some examples of these changes include the introduction of TI-Inspire calculators into our math classes, Labquest data collection devices into our science classes, on-line journaling in our English classes, smartboards into all of our classrooms, additional ethernet hookups and computers in many classrooms, new computers for our computer labs, and our district is also in the process of installing wireless internet access in our schools as well - though that is still a work in progress. The district has also been making available a number of technology teacher trainings. Some of these have been mandatory with compensation, but others have been completely voluntary, after school on our own time and a bit more few and far between than what I believe is really needed as many of them I would have liked to have attended, but was unable to.
If anything surprised me at all about this site it was the number of resources that were available, although they appeared to be resources more geared towards implementing the program on the district and state level rather than focused on the classrooms and teachers themselves which is probably why my district had not really pushed our awareness of this site and its available resources, but rather provided us with hard copies of the resources they felt were the most relevant to us.

Ideas for future blog use in my classroom

One way I would like to use blogging in the future in my classroom would be in conjunction with the topic that I was covering with my biology students just yesterday. That topic being genetic engineering. Learning activities I currently use or have used with this lesson include assignments that allow my students to explore some real world applications of genetic engineering that are already being used to benefit society including the production of human insulin to treat diabetes. Though my students know that this insulin is produced in a lab somewhere, they until this lesson they are unaware that it is actually produced by bacteria cells which have been genetically altered to produce human insulin. Most of their previous exposure to genetic engineering has been limited to the ethical debates that get the publicity and many have the pre-conception that it is all bad and dangerous and kills fetuses and such. I have also had my students do internet research on genetic engineering and write reports describing their opinions on whether genetic engineering should be allowed or not or what restrictions should be placed on genetic engineering based on their research. Having them post their research backed opinions on a blog rather than in a report to turn in to me would allow them to then take what they've learned and discuss and debate the issue with each other and others on the web.
Blogging would also allow for similiar discussions and debates over other scientific theories they learn about in class such as the theory of natural selection and evolution.

Another way I would like to apply blogs would be in their lab reports. This would help to reinforce writing their lab reports in such a way that their experiments can be replicated should their results be published. This is an area where they struggle a little even though they are taught that for scientific knowledge and theories to become accepted scientists check each others work and repeat each others experiments and design new similiar experiments to further test each other's theories and deductions. Posting their lab reports to blogs and evaluating each other's reports would make their lab reports part of that scientific collaboration rather than just more writing for a grade.

A way I would be interested in using blogs with my Anatomy and Physiology students would be to help them apply what they are learning about the body to medicine and medical research on treating diseases. Although, I am a little less sure about how I would set this one up.