Meaningful Learning
First off, I strongly believe all teachers and professors should have to read this chapter. I could relate to so many things in it from my experience as a student. The first topic that I stronly agree with is the Authentic attribute. A majority of the material I have learned throughout my education that has actually stuck with me is because I can relate it to something. I have either experienced it, see it everyday or had a teacher who easily related the material to every day life. Some accounting material was easier because I could relate it to my own personal finances. "Most contemporary research on learning has shown that learning tasks that are situated in some meaningful real-world related task or simulated in some case-based or problem-based leanring environment are not only better understood and remembered, but also are more consistently transferred to new situations." (p. 5) If research is proving that relating the material to every day life is more effective then I do not understand why teachers still just copy and paste material from the book into a power point and read through it. "When a teacher tells students what she or she knows, too often the teacher assumes the student will know it just like the teachers, that is, that the teacher has transferred knowledge to students." (p. 15) I could not agree more. That is exactly what the teacher is doing when just showing a power point presentation or writing notes on the board. Majority of the students just copy the notes down then don't bother to look at them until the night before the test and just memorize what they have to. The students never actually learn the material in any useful manner. "We believe that students should use the technology to represent what they know rather than reproducing what teachers and textbooks tell them." (p. 7) I feel these blog posting are a great way to use technology for our learning. They turn what is usually boring repetitive readings into a creative way to show our thoughts and knowledge on the subject. The whole time I was reading the chapter I could think back and relate to my own personal learning experiences making the reading easier to understand and more intriguing. So if all classes were designed in this manner to relate the material to our experiences and to be able to show our knowledge in creative way, not just writing a paper or answering questions then I strongly believe students would be more engaged in the learning process and retain the material at a much higher rate.
