Learning Environment vs Individual Differences

I have this thought that just came across my mind, so I want to share with you all. Do Learning Environment and Individual Differences have a relationship or are they actually independent?

So far, I have taught 4 pairs of twins in my 2 years in school.

Some people believe that the differences in intelligence result from a combination of hereditary and environmental factors. I have taught 3 pairs of identical twins and 1 pair of fraternal twins over the two years. And I have noticed that the identical twins academic results difference were not as great compared to that in the fraternal twins. Maybe environment factors are involved because the identical twins I taught are always found in the same class while the fraternal twins are in different classes. Maybe genes lead to environment effects, which in turn lead to differences in cognitive abilities or vice versus. That concludes that we still do not know how heritable intelligence is. This shows that heritabilities differ for groups.

• How about you?
• What do you think?
  

Make a Wish: The School I'd Like

When you were a student, have you ever waken up and felt very reluctant to attend school?

No matter how well or how poorly a student perform in the classroom, there will some moments in their time that they complain of going to school.

Whatever a child's academic ability is, pleasant surroundings definitely leads to a better attendance, an improved concentration and a healthy dose of motivation and self-esteem. It is also important for teachers to have a good environment which is adaptable to their day-to-day professional needs. Research has shown that the architecture, layout, decoration and facilities of the school play a vital role in shaping the Learning Environment.

In fact, Singapore government does really take note of how important the Learning Environment can affect our future generations. It has set aside a sum of money to allow schools of certain age to go through prime. Schools after going through prime looks like a new school and most neighbourhood schools are more spacious.

• So does your school have difficulty creating surroundings and facilities which complement teaching and learning?

How to Create an Effective Classroom Learning Environment using ICT

I went through 4 days of really "Intensive Learning" on MEd858-Classroom Learning Environment. Our course coordinator is Dr Quek from NIE.

The photo on the left is taken at a paper presentation with my coursemates and Dr Quek.



Reflections:
So what I have learnt so far? The followings are what I perceive so far.

1) ICT has really made a big impact in education. In order to engage my students in learning, I am going to bring what I have learnt back into my classrooms and shared with my fellow colleagues to benefit our students.

2). My blog is a good example. I feel that it is a pain to start a blog and to maintain one is really time-consuming. Finally I was 'forced' to start one because of this module. Hey, I started to enjoy blogging. Now I have a total new view about blog. It has become a platform for me where we can learn from one another. One can share news about anything under the sun. It can become a discussion platform too. We can read others blogs, quote them, and link them up.

3) I have started another learning platform way before I attended this course. As I can only teach my students the fundamental of photography and not how to take a photo that has an impact, my 2 other friends and I have decided to create a forum for our photography students where they can post their photos and exchange comments. They learnt through giving constuctive comments to others. While commenting, the students actually are learning too. You might want to consider Moodle for an effective online learning community. Moodle is a free and open source e-learning software platform. Do give it a try.

4) Wiki is another online learning environment that I have been exposed to during the course. A Wiki is a page or collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. It is more useful compared to email because it is good in organising group inputs. One of the platform I am using is the tool Wetpaint. Here is one of the Wiki that my group has created on Dr (Theo) Wubbels.

5) The next thing I have not been taught but am very keen to know is Podcast. What is it? It stands for Personal On Demand Casting. It refers either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; it is a series of audio or video digital-media files which is distributed over the internet by syndicated downloading, through web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers. It is useful to download the sources and catch it later when there is time.

Do consider what I mention above. It is easy to put them in use.

The Design of Learning Environments

Title: How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School

Authors: John D. Bransford, Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking


From this book, it has identified learning environments into 4 different perspectives .



Reflections:
The followings will be a brief description of the 4 different centered environments.

1) Learner-Centered Environments
This term includes teaching practices that have been called "culturally responsive," "culturally appropriate," "culturally compatible," and "culturally relevant''. It is also known as diagnostic teaching. It is based on the structure of a child knowledge, through observation, questioning and conversation and reflection on students' outcomes.

2) Knowledge-Centered Environments
It illustrates how people construct new knowledge based on their current knowledge. It focuses on the kinds of information and activities that help students to develop an understanding of disciplines. It also includes an emphasis on sense-making—on helping students become metacognitive by expecting new information to make sense and asking for clarification when it doesn't. An interesting approach know as "progressive formalization," which begins with the informal ideas that students bring to school and gradually helps them see how these ideas can be transformed and formalized. Instructional units encourage students to build on their informal ideas in a gradual but structured manner so that they acquire the concepts and procedures of a discipline.

3) Assessment-Centered Environments
An environment that provides opptunities for feedback and revision. It ensures that what is assessed must be congruent with the learning goals. It focuses on understanding and not only on memory for procedures and facts.

Two types of assessments:

• Formative (feedback and self-assessment)
• Summative

4) Community-Centered Environments
The term community centered refers to several aspects of community, including the classroom as a community, the school as a community, and the degree to which students, teachers, and administers feel connected to the larger community of homes, businesses, states, the nation, and even the world. It connects what is learnt in school to what happens outside of school and vice versa.

From the pervious posts, we all know that education need a change when our environments changed. People raise important questions about the design of learning environments—questions that suggest the value of rethinking what is taught, how it is taught, and how it is assessed. Above are some information that I find it very useful as a educator. It is difficult as an educator to strike a balance between learner-centred and knowledge-centred environments in local context. Personally I feel that we have to judge based on the learning abilities of our students in order to depend what kind of environment is suitable for our students.

I also believe that the key environment for learning is the family. I believe that the character a child depends on what kind of family background he/she come from. And will be related to how well academically the child can perform.

The Classrooms of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Title: Learning Environments Research: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Author: Barry J. Fraser

Reflections:
(Yesterday)
From the paper, I can see that research on Learning Environment has expanded, diversified and internationalized during the past few decades. Instruments are developed in the West and have been adapted in several Asian Countries. Singapore is one of them. The instruments are cross-validated for use in countries outside the West.

Here are the instruments that are mentioned for field studies in the Learning Environments. It would not be elaborated much here. You can refer them in some of the blogs under Classroom Learning Environment Learning Group. My fellow coursemates have more detailed explanation.
- Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI)
- Science Laboratory ENvironment Inventory (SLEI)
- Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES)
- What Is Happening In This Class? (WIHIC)
- Learning Environment Inventory (LEI)
- Classroom Environment Scale (CES)
- My Class Inventory (MCI)

(Today)
The instruments are translated in Chinese, Bahasa Melayu, Korean, Bahasa Indonesia for research in different Asian countries. The researches mainly focused on addociations between student outcomes and environemnt, evaluation of educational innovations, differences between students' and teachers' perceptions of the same classrooms, determinants of classroom environment, and cross-national studies.

Researchers are interested to find out the associations between students' cognitive and affective learning outcomes and their perceptions of psychosocial charactertistic of their classrooms.

(Tomorrow)
Can instruments be modified to suit our local context and the environment that the research is carried out? The answer is yes. Items in the intruments can be modified/removed but has to strictly follow the Scales classified according to Moos's Scheme - Relationship dimensions - Personal development dimensions - System maintenance and change dimensions.

The findings are very useful for educators like me hoping to improve student outcomes through the creation of the types of classroom environments. And it also convinces me that having a conducive environment is very important for learning and teaching.

Homo Zappiens vs Technology (ICT in Learning Environment)

I encountered a new term known as 'Homo Zappiens'. A guy who is known as Wim Veen used the term “Homo Zappiens” to typify a new student generation. He suggested that this generation possesses certain living and learning behaviours that are fundamentally different from those of the previous generations.

So what is so special about this new student generation?

It seems like students nowadays are born with computers on hand. XBox, PSP, PlayStation 3, LAN Gaming, Maple Stories, Tote (Warcraft) are common topics that our students are talking about during their free time. SMS, MSN, chat rooms, cell phones are common communication tools that they used. Do you agree with me?

It is very clear that our students have changed over the years, yet the ways the lessons are taught by our educators have not really changed. Teachers are still doing the talking most of the time. There is no waiting time when questions are posted to students. Surprising only 1.6sec of waiting time is given for the student to answer before the teacher loses his/her patience.

We can see that MOE is encouraging schools to use more technology in teaching. Smart board, E-learning (Lead portal), visualiser, projector, lap-top and tablet PC are very common technological tools found in school nowadays. Undoubtingly, these are necessary to fullfill the needs under Physical context in the Learning Environment. However, other than Physical aspect, we also must not forget the Students and Social needs that make up a Learning Environment too.

Changing environment = Changing education

Here are some possible Learning Platforms for our students.

• Wikis
• Blogs
• Forums
• Games
• Ipods
• Podcasts

Please do consider for the benefit of our students.

Perceptions of Computer-Supported Project Work Classroom Learning Environments

Title: Singapore Students' and Teachers' Perceptions of Computer-Supported Project Work Classroom Learning Environments

Authors: Angela F.L. Wong, Choon-Lang Quek, Shanti Divaharan, Woon-Chia Liu, Jarina Peer, and Michael D.Williams

Just read through a paper:

The paper presents a paradigm shift from a teacher-centred teaching and learning to a student-centred one in local (Singapore) schools. To help students feel a greater sense of achievement studying in a computer-supported learning environment, teachers may need to provide more support by facilitating their online sessions more frequently; probing, encouraging, and extending their thinking rather than just answering their queries. Without this support, students may feel lost and therefore perceive that they have not benefited much from learning in such an environment.

Reflections:

Now the question is: Are our teachers ready to move from the age of 'chalk and talk' to 'Smart board'?

My point of views are:

- Teachers need to be trained in using the softwares and hardwares.

- Teachers need to prepare the materials that can be uploaded for students learning.

- Teachers have carefully planned through the teaching.

- Availability of working computers.

- Students are to be interested in technology.

- Students need to be trained on using the equipment.

But it is worth all the troubles to engage our students in learning. Nowadays, students whom some see as being born with computers in their hands, the question has become "Does the youth need more than just good teaching?" When one observes classrooms lessons, it is clear that students have changed over the years while in many countries, the way lessons are taught has not changed.

Technology plays a part in teaching and learning by creating an effective learning environment.

What do you think? Maybe you can think about it.