Post 2

Wow... this week's readings had a lot of information! Not sure where to begin.

I agree with the point that Alessi and Trollip make on page 30 under the heading Individual Difference about how not all people learn alike and at the same rate. Being in the classroom with a bunch of 10 year olds, I definitely see this happening. For example in Math, I have some students that learn best watching me complete a problem on the overhead while there are other students that actually need to complete the problem to understand. They actually need the "hands on" experience.

Another part that I found interesting was the point they make about how the variety of opinions about how people learn is now greater than before. As I was reading our assignments it was wild to see all the different theories out there. When I was an Undergrad at Towson, I remember discussing constructivism, behavorism, the whole Pavlou's dog example, but it is truly amazing to me how much more has come about since then.

I am definitely a big advocate on the Constructivists theory. I believe that students do learn more when they are part of the learning. With this style, the facilitator has an important role in their learning. In the subject areas that I can use this method, I try to incorporate it into my lesson.

I just participated in a course where we had to read the assigned reading and post our responses to questions the teachers created. This was an all online course and the teachers were more of the facilitators within our discussions. They never really gave us a YES or NO to our responses telling us if we really "got" what we were suppose to get out of the reading. They would ask another question to the response we had given. I guess they were doing this to make us "THINK!" When we had a discussion on the constructivist approach we felt that the course was using that style. We were making our own meaning! It was a fun way to learn.