Cognitive Learning and Technology

This is a topic near and dear to my heart. As teachers we are brain builders trying to make memories for our students. We must use every avenue available to get learning into their long term memories. From humor to images and from rhymes to actual hands on objects, our goal is to get students to hang new learning on the existing branches of their cognition. Students in our high school classrooms create and interpret concept maps making connections between concepts with pencil lines which we hope will be connections in their minds.
How we ever did this without today's technology tools is a wonder. I began teaching in the age before the internet was available and now I use it daily to access images, lab simulations, models of molecules, even songs and poems. My best lessons start by tapping into students cognition by asking for prior knowledge to be written into their notes or by asking their ideas and questions about a visual image on the smartboard or a video from YouTube. I can remember tearing out pre-made blackline masters of concept maps from text workbooks to turn into overhead acetates and now online concept map creators like www.bubbl.us make a professional product out of my own connected ideas for a lesson and, even better, my students' ideas. As a class we can even take virtual field trips to another part of the globe or to a far away science research project through the internet and then post our responses on our own class webpage.

Teaching Science with Technology and a Behaviorist Approach

Teachers study all types of education philosophies to prepare for working with students. One popular, although perhaps old-fashioned, philosophy is Behaviorism [a great tutorial on what behaviorism is from the University of Georgia Department of Educational Psychology and Instructional Technology can be found at http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Behaviorism]. Decades ago psychologists began to explore stimulus – response behaviors in animals and people. Both respond to positive reinforcement like attention and rewards and negative reinforcement like punishment. Education today is a complex process involving addressing different learning styles, implementing a more thorough understanding of how the brain thinks and stores memories , and the creation of meaningful learning environments for all students. I believe that behaviorist approaches still can be valuable in the high school science classroom.
In secondary science education, we face challenges with our students that come from years of conditioning. Many students enter our rooms believing they are no good at science, or that they are not smart enough to excel in science, or even that science is too hard. It is difficult to coax out of students the effort it takes to learn ideas, practice skills, and persist because effort pays off. Pitler, Hibbell, Kuhn, and Malenoski in their book Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works reassured me that “(s)tudents can learn to operate from a belief that effort pays off even if they do not initially have this belief.” (2007, p155) Technology can provide terrific tools to reinforce student effort. From Behaviorism we know that students need to feel success to know that their effort paid off. Using a rubric and a spreadsheet program available to most computer users, teachers can direct students to enter their effort in various categories and compare it to their weekly quiz or test results. The computer can chart their effort next to their achievement in a side by side bar graph – a wonderful visual reinforcement for students. (Pitler, Hibbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007, pp 157-160). This application of technology and the time it takes to implement in class teaches students the value of effort. It is data driven – perfect for science classes. I am excited to try this approach this year.