Question 4

Gardner: I feel a successful blog must appeal to all students intelligences. The page must include variety in a quest to engage all students. For example visual learners will benefit from features such as pictures, those students with musical intelligences will enjoy the incorporation of my sound file and those problem solving students will thrive with the challenge of an online game. The use of a graphic organmiser and written information adds to the wide spectrum that this blog can appeal to. Above are some of the features that students can use.

Vygotskys: There is no doubt that Vygotskys ideas have had a strong effect on education, serving as a basis for educational approaches in which children are tutored or coached by more knowledgeable mentors. I know personally that I have learnt alot of skills by working with teachers, my parents and also my friends.Vygotskys theory successfully shows the benefits of social interactions as a means of learning. Vygotsky's emphasise on peer learning mirrors one of the main benefits of a blog. The students are connected online and have the opportunity to help, guide and critisise each other in a bid to futher each others learning.
Bloom: In 1956, Benjamin Bloom headed a group of educational psychologists who developed a classification of levels of intellectual behavior important in learning. Bloom found that over 95 % of the test questions students encounter require them to think only at the lowest possible level...the recall of information.
Bloom identified six levels within the cognitive domain, from the simple recall or recognition of facts, as the lowest level, through increasingly more complex and abstract mental levels, to the highest order which is classified as evaluation. Here are the six question categories supplied by Bloom
KNOWLEDGE
Who, what, when, where, how ...? (My blog through it's video provides a base for questions such as describe whatargument is being presented in the video clip
COMPREHENSION
describing in one's own words (My picture may lead to a question that asks the student to describe in their owbn words what is occurring in the picture)
APPLICATION
problem solving; (My game)
ANALYSIS
Outline/diagram... (My graphic organiser can be linked to questions asking the student to analise the content in the graph)
EVALUATION



Bruner- constuctivist theory:
A major theme in bruners findings is that learning is an active process in which the learner constructs new ideas or concepts based upon current/past knowledge. he says the learner constructs hypothesis and makes decisions relying on a cognitive structure to do so. A cognitive structure (i.e schema, mental models) provide meaning and organisation to experiences and allows the individual to synthesise the information given.
Blogs are successful in providing the scaffold for students to take on the constructivist style of learning. The information given enables students to construct their own personal schemas. For example the graphic organiser provides the framework for the student to come up with his/her own understanding of what is being presented. The video clip touches on past knowledge that they have e.g the 5 food groups and at the same time presents new information that becomes dissected by the students.
What do you think about...? (the audio clip perhaps)