Thinking About Learning

From my reading and researching for the courses I’m teaching, I’ve come across some elements that are connecting to the upcoming 6411 Cognition and Learning course. Allan Luke is a theorists and educational thinker from Australia. I was aware of his work on literacy (from my long term memory vault) and randomly thought he may have some ideas that would fit into the teaching events I’m designing. This led to several videos that I’ll post here since there is some overlap to thinking and cognition.

Alan Luke talks about the difference between critical thinking and critical literacy, the historical routes of each, and how they come together in the classroom.

Allan Luke: Critical Thinking and Critical Literacy from The Learning Exchange (1) on Vimeo.

From here, I dipped into one of the activities I do with my students to establish foundational knowledge about learning, as a complex concept. In the Willingham text, this would be the building of background knowledge. I begin with this video and a few blog posts by educational thinkers (Amy Burvall: Learning as Remix, Students as Skateboarders, and Steve Wheeler: Digital Literacies in the Age of Remix) about what learning is. There’s some connections to cognition and learning in this activity.

What is Learning? from CLRI on Vimeo.

So, this is the reason for a whole course on cognition and learning. The more I know, the more I will learn. The more I think, the more I will know. By blogging about what I’m thinking and reading, the richer my memory will become.

Image Attribution: 

Blogs by Sophie Janotta, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blog-684748_640.jpg  adapted by Wheeler, S. (2011, June 11). Learning, storytelling and technology. Slide 24. Retrieved from http://www.steve-wheeler.co.uk/2016/06/learning-storytelling-and-technology.html 

Reference

Willingham, D. (2009). Why don’t students like school? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.