Since I am the computer teacher at my school, and one who has had no formal education in technology, I always find articles about teaching technology extremely interesting. The articles we read this week help to give organization to what I'm trying to do with in my class.I enjoyed the easy-to-understand, straight-forward information in Principles of Teaching and Learning. Reading the articles on learning and teaching principles, I found myself applying the information to my 6th grade son who was diagnosed with ADHD in 3rd grade. This past year he struggled in several classes, and as I read many of the principles, I wondered if his teachers had any concept of these principles. The principles I found most relevant are 3, 4, and 5. My son has an extremely difficult time processing and organizing ideas. He's very bright but when it comes to completing steps, for example in math, his anxious mind doesn't slow down enough to complete sequential problems; therefore, he messes up. It was my observation that little was done to try to work through this issue, but in all fairness, the teachers at my school aren't trained to address this issue, which is not limited to my son alone. Likewise, 4 and 5 principles are extremely significant to learning. Even as adults, most of us learn best by doing and redoing and processing our mistakes and successes.
The second article on the study was a bit over my head, I have to say. I am not practiced in reading research articles. I couldn't figure out what the numbers meant, nor did I understand all the terminology. I did, however, grasp the article's contention that more concrete studies need to be done. I did find it perplexing that the study only found a small success in student learning outcome when including technology. I would have believed that it provides a much better learning outcome and not just a small one. The study does seem to address my conerns, however; how to best improve my tech program. I am constantly struggling with how to make tangible the concepts that are taught.
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Yes, the second article was a bit lengthy and one of the concepts I pulled out was that much of the technology addressed was from the early 1990’s and the study was published in 2003. In this era of increased growth in technology I think that the study is limited in its scope but the authors seemed well aware of this fact. In one of the sections the authors commented on it saying that they were disappointed with the parameters that were not discussed in the studies they were referencing and how there was a great deal of important information that was missing from the studies. I think the meta-analysis is really important in that it now can serve as a reference point for future analyses.
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