Cognitivism in Practice

This week's resources presented my highlight into the cognitivism practice. Dr. Orey in his video spoke about how information is processed in the brain. He made reference to the fact that people remember more images and use a process of elaboration theory where information is stored in the long term memory. (Laureate Inc, 2009). Our students remember less of what they are told and more of what they do. As educators we also have to be aware of the different learning styles that are in our classroom and thus gear our lessons to accommodate and facilitate such learners. We want our students to store the information they have learned in their long-term memory but the reality is that our students will not even remember what they did in the last 24 hours. School is of little importance to some of them and so getting them to remember important information can be difficult.

Concept mapping is a wonderful tool to help students organize and see the bigger picture. I use concept maps during a topic. My students are presented with a graphic organizer in which they fill in the topics we will be covering for the topic in Algebra class. Then as each lesson progresses they write a key word, definition and/or interesting fact in the subsequent nodes. I believe this concept map helps them to see the big picture and when it is time for us to summarize each topic and ultimately the chapter they have a visual representation which they can refer to.

I like the idea of the virtual field trip but as a teacher of mathematics it is more difficult for me to find information/websites that have virtual tours related to high school math such as Algebra, Geometry, Algebra2. I however did find something useful at www.brightstorm.com. This is an interactive website that allows students to listen to tutorials and practice at their own pace. I am adding this one to my collection of websites.