cognitivism in practice

Giving students a gift of cognitive tools to aid students in processing information is a gift that will be employed for a lifetime. Giving students ways to organize information and to make sensory connections with content information are methods to help students gain elaboration to aid in obtaining episodic events so students will store what they have learned into their long-term memory.

Cues and questions as discussed by Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, and Malenoski are ways to tap into students’ background knowledge so a connection can be made to the content they will be learning. When visuals such as concept maps and other multimedia resources are integrated with cues and questions, connections, and therefore learning, can happen for those who learn through different senses. Multimedia resources such as concept maps and powerpoints support the duel coding theory presented by Orey in the DVD. They each present an image. People are more apt to remember an image than text. But, when an image is tagged with text, the brain will store both in long-term memory.

Summarizing information and taking notes are both learning strategies that require students to synthesize information and decipher important information from nonessential information. The use of multimedia resources such as concept mapping and powerpoints, aid students in tapping into their senses by helping them organize their information effectively so they will be able to make connections to the content allowing the brain to store the essential information into long term memory. Other multimedia resources such as wikis and blogs allow note taking and summarizing to be done collaboratively letting students communicate while other senses are being stimulated at the same time. One benefit of each of these learning strategies, when supported through technology, can be presented as a project and can be a great tool for reciprocal learning to take place.