learning theories

Well, this is it.  My final entry in the Learning Theories class for Summer of 2009.  I thought it was best to wrap up this class with a short but sweet blog, so here goes.

Learning is when you, your child, your friend, any living thing, incorporates new knowledge which changes their life, no matter how minimal.  The best type of learning is the type that influences the learner's life for the better, but unfortunately, a lot of learning hinders the learner's life.  That's where teachers come in.  Teachers are not just people in a classroom during the school day, helping people learn.  Teachers are anybody, any living thing that helps facilitate learning. 

The articles this week were interesting for several reasons.  The first article, written clear back in 1981 is quite dated, but I was amazed at how people were already talking about how games can affect learning.  When I realized the author was talking about games such as "bricks", "pong", and "space invaders" I laughed out loud.  Games have come so far since then but I'm not sure the educational component has gone anywhere.  We now have games where the players can just about live their entire life in a virtual world (Second Life for example), working, going to parties, meeting people, and many other things.  There are games now that are so photo-realistic that you have to put them up to a real video to compare them (NBA Basketball)Click here to read more »

The learning theory of the week, schema theory made for some interesting reading.  At first glance the theory seems quite close to last week's theory, meaning.  It took me a while to understand how the two compare because they both deal with previous knowledge as being an important factor in new learning.  While the way I see learning hasn't really change from last week, the schema theory shows that the previous knowledge that a student brings to the learning can be more difficult to remedy than I thought before. 

Previous knowledge, or schemata, can take the form of prejudices and those are hard to see past.  It is easy to see how a person's past can show new concepts in a certain "light" that can change how they are perceived.