Bb Vista Week 3 Task:

My Learning Theory

I really enjoyed the reading of these two articles about learning theories. I believe that it is very much related to my own work when I am doing any training to students or staff. I consider learning as a processes group life cycle which divided into five phases “see Fig-1”: 

                                                Fig.1 “My own imagination of learning life cycle”

1- Planning process phase; it maintains the way curriculum, instruction, and assessments will be designed. This phase should be based on what is taught, why it is taught, how it is taught, and how learning is assessed, plus taking into consideration the social and community context.  I prefer to plan a course using the cognitive and humanist aspects, I believe in rule that is saying “failing to plan is planning to fail”. (It would be great if students can be involved in this phase someway somehow, through ideas about instruction, assessments, and even curriculum).                                                                                                                                              2- Design process phase; where we design the actual curriculum, instruction, and assessments which will be aligned with the teaching in the 21^st century knowledge society; that encourage students to understand and to use the metacognition technique; that encourage students to be active learner. (It would be great if students can be involved in this phase someway somehow, through ideas about instruction, assessments, and even curriculum).                                                                                                                                               3- Implementation process phase; it is the start point in interaction between student and teacher which should be bi-directional communication and not only one side talking and other side is listening. Teacher should help in changing any mismatch preconceptions with his students, help them to imagine the new concepts from their angle, and help students in creating their own metacognition technique. Again I personally prefer cognitive and humanist theories with taking into consideration the social and community context of the student.                                                                                                                                                      4- Monitoring process phase; this phase should be there from the start of planning phase to the end of the course, as it keep us updated with the students’ feedback/preconceptions/metacognition, it should be the phase which enable us to take proper decisions to enhance students’ experience with learning.                                                                                                                                                     5- Closing process phase; this is the phase where our course ended and we get the learned lessons from it to enhance our performance in next course, plus we should get a final feedback from students about what they did like in that course?/was it helpful for them in their practical life?/……

 I Value:
Using latest useful technology tools in education. 
Honest in teaching & learning. 
Advising and accepting other side point of view.                                               
Positive interaction between teacher & students during any discussion.                            

I believe in:
Education is a bi-directional communication between teacher & student.
Education is an important mission statement for a teacher.
Education “learning” is happening every day to all of us in different situations and not only inside school.

My Metaphors:
Teaching for me is like cleaning my room, organize books in shelves, and spray air refresher. This makes me very happy and willing to go on with other activities in my life.


students’ understanding Research:
I would like to say that in order to apply an understanding strategy in our classroom we should take a deep look to the main elements involved in learning process, teacher/curriculum/instruction/assessment/student/learning environment.

Let’s start with the main player (the teacher of course), I did read Marco Terese’s post about learning in Finnish, I do like their technique in teaching which permit teacher to teach only after a mastery level in training and education on how to deal with students’ needs, also I liked their policy/system regarding relation between teachers which make them work as a one team and not as a competitors, Also find below a good URL which focus on teachers’ evaluation:
http://www.tqsource.org/publications/February2008Brief.pdf

Second element is curriculum, which should present and reflect the concepts in simple and remarkable ways, avoiding complex examples/languages statements (Specially for non-native language speakers, which is the case for majority of the students all over the world today), giving examples from practical life to mutually apply/transfer between ever-day life and school, using graphics to illustrates concepts (when applicable), with a clearly defined targets from this subject-matter, with quizzes that test understanding after every module, with activities that encourage brainstorming and group work, not a hug syllabus in one book , should contain colors papers (specially graphics’ papers), fonts should be clear and readable (even the fonts on drawings/graphs!!), it should look as a nice book/ebook that student will like to read it.
See the below URL which take about designing curricula that seek understanding:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_by_Design

Third element is instruction, this is a big challenge, as instruction should present the concepts but using the innovative techniques in presenting these concepts using Audio/Video/Presentation/Project-based/...to make sure that instruction speak the same language as our students (Modern Technology Language). which could be illustrated very well in some field like health science see below youtube link as an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGxho71tScM&feature=related
Also teacher need to implement his own ideas (creations) which make subject-matter understood, plus removing misconceptions, see below URL:
http://www.edutopia.org/measuring-what-counts-memorization-versus-understanding

Fourth element is assessment, I believe that because most of our assessments were approached for memorizing and not for understanding that make our students align themselves with memorizing and not understanding as the assessments wants!!.
see below URL:
http://api.ning.com/files/4yilmyiT9cAYDaMWLbQTARb6WSh7rrjYuFIPAJJ5POHqbtuRueuXKpd0nLiRjviLQEwJT*uvvpq0ZZ1BtGIZopvJrjawAxdS/AssessmentforLearning1.pdf

Fifth element is student, which all elements in this process should help him/her to gain understanding to the subject matter, what motivate her/him to understand ?
see below URL:
http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/affective/motivation.html

Last but not least element is the learning environment, which include school or even home which affect students mentality, see below URL:
http://www.johnseelybrown.com/newlearning.pdf

That was a broadly coverage for students’ understanding.