EDLD+5364+Week+1

=**My Impressions from Week One of EDLD 5364**=


 * Part I - The Videos**

Firstly, I must ask if anyone else had the video glitch I experienced in the second lecture video - from approximately 2:52 through 3:07 I got loud, jumpy white noise with a white screen - then it returned to normal. It was extremely jarring!

Speaking of jarring, I found myself thinking for days over the "Cyborg Learning Theory" video. I still don't know how I feel about this. I'm a big fan of learning, a big fan of technology, and a big fan of human character. That being said, I'm confused about how I feel about combining all three into a cyborg situation. When a human being goes through the effort of learning how to do something well, there is an appreciation on two counts: 1) appreciating the perseverance it took for that person to reach a level of excellence and 2) the actual appreciation of the accomplishment itself. By removing the "effort" part and simply downloading necessary information, I feel it makes the human being somewhat "less." It's sort of like cheating on a test - where is the glory of getting a good grade when the learning effort did not come from you? Could cyborg technology improve the human condition? Perhaps...but I'm not completely convinced at the present moment.

In relation to the connectivism theory video and the constructivism video, I find myself wondering why these two theories are worthy of separate study. I don't see how you can take a constructivist approach to learning without incorporating connectivism and vice versa. More on this in the following section.


 * Part II - The Readings and Discussion**

The readings were a valuable introduction to the basic concepts involved when studying technology and its relationship to students and teachers. I have conducted my own unofficial research in my classroom and what I have found is: yes, including technology does make a difference. The lessons I tried this with included technology on a fairly low level, but assessment of students following the lesson showed that students who had the same experience using technology (a student response systemm combined with an interactive whiteboard) scored higher than students who used paper/pencil methods.

I particularly enjoyed reading the excerpt from //How People Learn: Brain,Mind, Experience, and School// by J. D. Bransford, A.L. Brown, and R.R. Cocking not only for the content, but it was interesting reading a "book" online where you "turned pages." I felt this was evidence of the value of technology in teaching. When you think about it, the experience wasn't all that different from holding a paper book in your hand and turning the pages, but something about reading it on a screen and clicking through the pages did have an impact.