Week 7

Week 7 Blog posting

·        Now that you have a deeper understanding of the different learning theories and learning styles, how has your view on how you learn changed?

My view has changed. I realize that I learn best with connectivism. As I stop and think about how I learn and where I get my information from, I realized its all with technology. I am constantly looking things up on my phone trying to figure how something works or to get instruction on how to replace my tail lights. I love being connected and having access to anything and everything.

·        What have you learned about the various learning theories and learning styles over the past weeks that can further explain your own personal learning preferences?

I did not know about all the different learning theories. Outside of visual learning I never really thought about it. It is really neat to have different ways to teach and to gain the interest of those you are teaching. Connectivism is my favorite because that is how I learn. Having access to and array of information is just spectacular.

·        What role does technology play in your learning (i.e., as a way to search for information, to record information, to create, etc.)?

Technology has a huge role in my learning. Right now I am using multiple different types of technology. First, I am typing this on a Microsoft Surface. I am posting this on the internet. Many different people have access to be able to see why I’m typing. I use google on a daily basis. I have an Amazon echo that I can quickly ask questions to find out what the weather is like or ask for a news briefing while I’m getting ready for work.

The main source of technology I use is Waldenu.edu. Yes, the university I am enrolled in is purely online. I have countless resources in my program. I have an online library among other things. I feel in this new age, technology is our main source of learning, even if we didn’t think about it. 

Connectivism

Connectivism

·         How has your network changed the way you learn?

Being able to step back and look at the network available to me, I see that there are countless resources. The networking that I found interesting is social media. Sure, you can spend hours looking at your friend’s vacation pictures and catching up with old friends. The surprising thing to me was the amount of knowledge that is shared. There are a lot of pages that post informative information from how to cook a duck to understanding how Elon Musk’s newest idea will work. Information is available, we just need to realize where we can get it and use it to our advantage.

·         Which digital tools best facilitate learning for you?

A digital tool that I use daily is google.com. This gives me access the all the internet has to offer. I can find anything from learning how quantum mechanics work to learning how to be a better father. Having the world at my fingertips has really helped me in my undergrad as well as my graduate degree.

When I have questions, I use google as well. I have used it to help me understand the meaning of a word. This helps as sometimes I want to use a word and I check it out first and find that it wasn’t what I was wanting and saved my self from an awkward situation. Google connects me to scholarly articles and blogs that give valid information to help me understand new and exciting things.

           

·         In what ways does your personal learning network support or refute the central tenets of connectivism?

My personal learning network fully supports the theory of Connectivism. As discussed earlier, I use many different online networks. I am connected to many different people throughout the world. Having access to get online and search anything I want. I can learn about what I need to do to become a Sherpa and help people climb Mount Everest. Never before being connected with the world would I ever have access to such a thing. Being fully connected is the way the world is going. Information is shared every day and being connected helps me learn from that information.

Week 2 The Brain and Learning

This week I've been asked to find two online resources regarding this weeks topic, The brain and learning. Below are the two resources as well as the value I perceived from these resources.



Resource 1:    Learning & The Brain

Learning & the Brain is a great resource when learning about how the brain learns information. The article I found was called, "Working Memory Cheat Sheet".  I really enjoyed this read. One thing I've always struggled with was remembering things shortly after I've been told them. It was interesting to learn how my brain works and different ways to try to get better at remembering things.




Resource 2:  Simply Psychology

Simply Psychology is a great resource for all things Psychology. In the link above, I found an article that talks about Information Processing Theory. In this article it explains how our brain processes inforamation and how it determines what store in our short term memory and what is eventually in our long term memory. One thing that I found interesting in this article, is that when recalling information, we are only seeing very little of what we have stored in long term memory. Long term memory has unlimited storage so we will always be able to store memories and information there to recall at a later time.

Instructional Design Blogs

Week 1: Blog,

I am currently enrolled in Walden University in the master’s program for Instructional Design and technology. In this blog, you will find information I find and other things regarding Instructional Design.

This week I was tasked with finding three blogs that I can reference for ideas and tips on how to be a better trainer. The first blog I found was  Elucidat. 

The post I found titled, Learners are distracted and impatient. Here are 5 ideas to help you motivate learners in 2016. This was a great article and had some very great points. A point made is we need to focus on the learning and make it useful. Too many times we are trained on things and shown how to make it useful. I my mind, this means we won't internalize the training and eventually we will be trained on it again in the future. It amazes me how much technology is a part of our lives. We are constantly checking our phones for messages or notifications from our apps. This has caused our brains to always be multi-tasking. 

Another blog I found was Articulate. I really like this blog as it is focused on e-learning. With technology become the main source of training, I think that learning all we can about it will help us in our career as instructional designers. An article I found that I enjoyed was, motivate your with these 5 simple steps. This was like the first blog I found but this pertained specifically to e-learning. One of the 5 steps is rewarding your learners. This can really help motivate your learners and they will work hard to remember what you have taught to win a prize or whatever reward you are able to give.

The third one I found was from Training Mag. This site has a ton of resources to help with learning development and ideas. This site is dedicated to professional development. The article I found interesting is called, TALENT TIPS: MOTIVATING LEARNERS TO LEARN. One of the tips in this article is answering the question, what’s in this for me? When delivering a training we need to answer that question so that the learner will be engaged in learning because they see what they should get from the training.

I really enjoyed learning from these blogs and will continue checking back with them to learn not only while in my current class but throughout my career.