Final Blog

I appreciated Dweck’s quote, “I’m going to teach you,” not “I’m going to judge your talent” (p. 191).  That statement speaks volumes to the effect of mindset on teaching practices.  In the article by Dweck, I was surprised by the fact that a teacher at a college would be reprimanded for expecting students to aspire to her high standards.  I remember when I first began teaching in Kentucky.  The statewide accountability system was somewhat new. I recall a conversation I had with a veteran teacher who informed me that all children needed to be proficient, so on a scale of one to four, they needed to be at a three.  A three not a four, I wondered.  I taught to the “four” standard anyway, setting high standards for my students and informing them that with hard work and a good instructional plan, they could do it.

In consideration to Outliers, Gladwell made several interesting points.  Interestingly, the idea that stuck with me dealt with language.  How does language impair our memory?  The information he wrote regarding our number system and language as compared to the Asians was quite profound.  I immediately made a connection to Mayer and cognitive load theory.  Imagine if we could simply restructure our language better to represent numbers how that might both reduce cognitive load and make mathematical practices less complex for children.

I feel like this semester has challenged my thinking in both how people learn and what I can do as an instructor in assisting my students’ development of deeper understanding of concepts.  I believe   people learn best with they have the time to make sense of the world around them as well as an instructor to help guide instruction and explain when misconceptions arise. People have cognitive limitations that teachers need to be aware of and plan for to make the time we have in a classroom beneficial and not overwhelming.  

RR # 11

Question: To what extent do teachers explicitly teach metacognitive strategies to students in their classrooms?

Pintrich made several important points in his article regarding metacognition and learning. The point that I found myself drawn to dealt with the need to teach to metacognitive knowledge explicitly. Pincher stated, “many teachers assume that some students will be able to acquire metacognitive knowledge on their own, while others lack the ability to do so” (p. 223).  If you were to ask teachers what they teach, I am certain the list of responses might include content knowledge, behaviors or perhaps a list of state mandated standards. I am not certain a large number of them would list metacognitive skills as a top priority, but instead listed as a fleeting afterthought of something that should be included. 
As a student, I used memory techniques and mnemonic devices to assist in the recall of various information such as the order of colors in a spectrum to the elements on the periodic table.   As a classroom teacher, I encouraged students to organize ideas in graphical formats, summarize paragraphs into their own language and ask themselves questions about their own learning.  It was several years before I realized such learning tasks helped students acquire metacognitive knowledge, I taught my students in the way I had learned best. They were strategies that worked for me.  Teachers often fail to include important instruction in the area of metacognitive knowledge, problem solving, creativity or other thinking skills because of a narrow focus on standards, assessment and accountability.  I wonder what students would be able to accomplish if given instruction in these areas along with content information.

RR #10

Question:  How does cognitive load theory relate to the ability to multitask?

In the Rosen article, the author addressed several concerns in regards to multitasking, including studies on how multitasking could lead to health issues, less productivity and the inability to retrieve learned material easily. Rosen made an excellent point in regards to attention in this statement, "When we talk about multitasking, we are really talking about attention: the art of paying attention, the ability to shift our attention, and, more broadly, to exercise judgment about what objects are worthy of our attention" (p. 109).

As people watch TV, play a computer game and instant message a friend, they are shifting their attention from one object to another.  I have done this myself, not really paying complete attention to all three things at once, but shifting my attention to be able to juggle all three events at the same time and keep up with them. However, I could not multitask and read our William James book for class. Due do the complexity of the text, I had to focus and think about each sentence.  If my husband or daughters asked me a question while reading, I often went back to the beginning of the paragraph to reread.  Reading that text, initially provided some cognitive demand for me.  Perhaps, William James would agree.  Our attention is one stream and not a small group of meandering creeks clustered together.

I found this great video on multitasking and the brain, providing some explaination of the physical process our bodies go through when we work on two tasks at once:

Module 7

Below is a TED talk from Jeff Hawkins about how brain science will change computing:




In his talk, he discussed how our brains are memory systems and not really information processors.  I found his explanation of why we remember things from a physical stance interesting.  He explains the memory systems of human brains and the fact the we are intelligent stems from our ability to predict based on our memory.  Human memory systems are now being used to create smarter computers.

RR #9

As I read the King-Friedrichs article, I considered all of the elements of good instruction that surfaced. She had engaged her students by making a connection to personal experiences and then used those experiences as a common playing field to build instruction.  She incorporated real problems, sensory experiences, authentic assessments and fun.  I related to the statement, ‘Classroom teachers face the challenge of making the encoding of the information and skills that we are attempting to teach students as elaborate and deep as possible”(p.77).

After I taught 5^th grade for the first year and my students took the end of the year state assessment, I remember how my feelings of excitement turned to disappointment.  Many students could not recall social studies content that I taught early in the school year, even though I had asked questions about the material periodically throughout the remainder of the year.  I had failed them.  That summer, I spent time reflecting on my own learning experiences. As I pondered over all of the reasons why I remembered information, which seemed so random, a common theme emerged.  I had participated in simulations.   The first unit I taught the next year in 5^th grade social studies was Explorers.  I decided to provide my students with some experiences in exploration, from the perspective of an explorer and the perspective of Native Americans.  In order to feel like an explorer, I hid a chocolate bar in the classroom and placed the class into unequal teams.  The disgruntled voices seemed to soften when I explained how different countries spent different amounts of money in exploratory endeavors.  The benefit of a larger team meant more individuals searching for the chocolate, while a smaller team meant a larger portion of the reward for each person.  Immediately following the victory for the winning team, I asked everyone to write about the experience and to include their personal thoughts and feelings about the exercise.  The next day, a few fellow teachers entered my classroom during social studies, placing a flag on the door and speaking a foreign language.  The students had no idea what was going on and I played along. We offered the strangers treats from the treat box and they presented us with a deflated basketball and a pair of wooden shoes, both of which were useless to us. The strangers communicated to us that they were taking over the classroom and would be back.  On the way out, they took our treat box with them.  I knew these simulations made lasting impressions for many of my students, some of which stopped me years after later recalling the events as if they had happened yesterday.  I am sure William James would say I had captured their stream of consciousness.  He would also say they had made multiple associations. I had managed to make these students angry, excited, disgruntled and elated.  I end this post wondering about this big question: How do emotions influence how we remember experiences?

RR #8

As I read Pinker’s article, I became intrigued with his ideas of language and thought.  Language is a vehicle we use to communicate ideas and thoughts to others as well as a tool used to assist in our own retention of material.  Pinker continued to describe how infants and animals thought without formal language and the fact that I could not recall verbatim every word from the last page I read but instead just remembered the main points.  In his third discussion point on language, he stated, “We often grope for words, are dissatisfied with what we write because it does not express what we want to say, or discover when every combination of words seems wrong that we don’t really know what we want to say. And when we get frustrated with a mismatch between our language and our thoughts we don’t give up, defeated and mum, we change the language” (p. 210).  This passage made me think about children in our classrooms.  How does language create a barrier to learning for children?

When talking about language barriers in classrooms, many are quick to assume that English language learners and students with special needs are the only students who may have trouble communicating.  As a former classroom teacher, I remember working with bright students who did not have the advantage of growing up in homes where they heard academic language spoken.  This did not mean these students were not intelligent, but simply lacked the academic language necessary to be successful in school.  How frustrated I know many students are, sitting in classrooms and having the knowledge of understanding concepts but not the language to express this understanding either written or verbal to the classroom teacher.  As teachers, we need to make sure we are teaching domain specific vocabulary and other academic language for children to have the tools they need for communicating their understandings of concepts and skills to both teachers and peers.  We also must remember to provide students time to think, gather the words in their mind to express what it is they desire to say. 

William James would agree that a child understands and remembers better, when associations are made.  Students need to associate specific language to content to have a clear understanding and the ability to communicate their ideas.

Module 6

When a person solves problems in a multimedia environment, information is received through auditory and visual sensory receptors. Poor designs in multimedia environments and print materials increase cognitive load for learners. The video below explains split attention effect:

Mayer and Moreno (2003) discuss the split attention effect and different ways to reduce cognitive load in their article, Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning.  One scenario mentioned in the article describes a learning environment in which the student is asked to watch a simulation. Located beneath the simulation is the text supporting the activity.  The learner is left with two areas of a screen to pay attention to, both of which are visual.  A solution to reduce cognitive load is to offer the text in the form of narration.  The simulation would still be received through the visual receptors, but the text as narration is received through audio.

As I read Mayer and Moreno's article, I considered how I structure web environments, PowerPoints and other instructional materials consisting of multimedia.  Perhaps, I create unintended cognitive load through the design of these tools.  Split attention effect is something classroom teachers should consider when creating paper materials for assessments, review or learning especially if the student is required to view a diagram, image or graph to answer a question.


Mayer, R. and Moreno, R. (2003). Nine ways to reduce cognitve load in multimedia learning. Educational Psychologist, 38(1), 43-52.