Learning Theories and Education: Toward a Decade of Synergy

This goal of this article was to discuss a synergistic view of traditional research methodologies that pertain to learning and education. There were three strands of learning discussed in the reading: 1) Implicit learning, 2) Informal learning, and 3) Designs for formal learning and beyond. Of the three, the first two strands of learning were the most related. I can also see both of them relating to technology in many ways. First of all, students can learn about apps from a very young age due to Implicit Learning. In my experience, I have seen many children bang around on a tablet or phone until they get the hang of an app and what types of interactions cause things to happen on screen. They don’t know that they’re learning, but they are. I can see how Informal Learning could happen with technology for similar reasons. A child is using some form of tech for leisure purposes and is learning through doing so without even realizing it. Finally, the third section reminded me of interviewing for teaching jobs when the chapter discussed the KUD, how you know when a student is successful, and the process to get them there. The final section of the article also talked about pedagogical content knowledge, innovation, 21st-century learning, and ideas like knowledge building. All the things that I have had to explain on many occasions during an interview. All in all, this article was very informative but I definitely felt that it could have been shorter or at least used fewer repeated examples.

Mobile Learning: Small Devices, Big Issues

This article stood out to me as being well organized and not too long. It discussed ways to successfully use mobile devices to improve learning, which makes mobile learning successful, and challenges for evaluation of mobile learning. I saw many parallels between how learning situations were designed for mobile integration and regular classroom instruction; as they should parallel each other. The article finished up with three levels of evaluating technology in an educational environment, and three in-depth examples of tech use. The one that resonated the most with me as an art teacher was the MyArtSpace project because it enhanced the learning potential of an art-related field trip.

Media Use, Face-to-Face Communication, Media Multitasking, and Social Well-Being Among 8- to 12-Year-Old Girls

This research study provided a more negative view of the impact of media and technology on social interactions. I think that more studies would need to be done to really show the correlation, but it begs the question if the results would be the same if students were polled on their feelings and interactions only while at school. It could be that students with lower self-esteem are less likely to engage in social activities that are face to face, whereas the results from this study make it seem like students who use more media have more negative social perceptions because of using more media. This could just be my own misinformed interpretation but the tone of the article appears to be trying to make a connection that perhaps isn’t there; that using more tech causes you to feel like you are a social outcast and have a poorer self-image. Despite my opinion, the article does give the statement, “This study cannot establish whether there are a cause and effect relationship between media use and [social consequences]. And if there are such relationships, they could well run in both directions simultaneously.”

Identity as an Analytic Lens for Research in Education

While a very interesting read, the main thing I gathered from this selection was that there are different modalities through which people can identify or be identified. On page 109, the reading includes technology to say that a person engages in a variety of different combinations of things, including “…using objects, tools, or technologies in a certain way.” The only connection I can make is that people will see themselves in a certain way depending on how much technology they do or don’t use. This could get in the way of education or help it, depending on how strong a person’s viewpoint of their tech use is. For example, a person might consider themselves to be, ‘old-fashioned’ and thus reject the use of technology in their classroom just based on that identity. They could also see themselves as ‘tech-savvy’ and try to use too much tech in their classroom based on that identity.