Jennifer Corbett AIL 601 Principles of Instructional Technology Final presentation Final theory presentation (50 points) -Creativity

(10 points) -Within in time limits (10 points) -Soundness of content Does it make sense? Is it reasonable? (30 points) An Owl-legory Once upon a time in an enchanted forestnah, just kidding. Once upon a time, two young raccoons lost their way in the forest and were separated from their raccoon family. A kind owl family took in the two young raccoons to raise as their own and be part of their family. However, the owls soon realized that the raccoons had a few lessons to learn about being owls, so the wisest of the owls set out to create a lesson plan to teach the raccoons how to become productive members of the owl family. The wise old owl had studied various theories of learning and instruction through his years, and he decided on three main theories of learning on which to base his instruction. The predominant theories of learning and instruction that he practiced were behaviorism, cognitive information processing, and constructivism. Behaviorism, brought about by Skinner, is characterized by a focus on observable behavior. The wise old owl uses the theory of behaviorism to set rules for his classroom and consequences for when those rules are broken. He also reinforces behavior to either increase or decrease behaviors in his classroom. The wise old owl also incorporates cognitive information processing in his lessons. Understanding CIP helps the owl plan for activities that students will remember, to encode information from short term to long term memory. By understanding how memory works, the wise old owl can provide organized instruction, arrange for variable practice, and enhance learners encoding and memory. Finally, the wise old owl incorporates the ideas of constructivism in his lesson planning. Constructivism is based on the assumption that knowledge is constructed by the learner, based on the learners experiences and unique frame of reference. The raccoons have just switched communities from that of a raccoon community to that of an owl community, so the wise old owl will emphasize learning in this new context. Now, the wise owl understands that behaviorism and cognitive information processing follow the epistemology of objectivism, and that constructivism is grounded in interpretivism. However, all three learning theories can contribute to effective instructional design. There is no one size fits all

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approach. Learners and environments can vary, and a hybrid approach that combines behaviorist, cognitivist, and constructivist theory would better help meet the needs of learners than one theory alone. The first thing the wise old owl had to do was identify the nature of these learners. He found through pre-assessment that the raccoons were in Piagets preoperational stage (about two to three years old in human terms). The raccoons had the ability to mentally represent objects and could imitate an activity long after it had occurred. The raccoons could also play pretend, a stage in which language can be acquired quickly. After the wise old owl had indentified the nature of the learner, he had to identify learning goals for the raccoons and determine reinforcements. The wise owl decided that he was going to work on basic Owl vocabulary single words, short phrases, greetings, polite expressions, and other memorized expressions on a limited number of topics. The wise old owl knew from his studies that language learning combined theories of behaviorism and cognitive maps, so he started out by showing pictures to the raccoons and stating what the symbols represent for those words. The raccoons created pictorial dictionaries for their new words. These were graphic representations of words to help facilitate encoding and storage of information. Next, the raccoons were shown 20 words and had two minutes to memorize as many words as possible. After twenty minutes, the words are removed from sight, and the raccoons must write down as many words as they can remember. However, visual information can be forgotten very quickly without further processing. At this point, show classmates 20 words for two minutes, take the words away, and see how many they can remember and write down. Use these words in this order: microphone, floor, bowl, television, cat, broom, clock, blue jeans, battery, bicycle, green, bridge, trash, bus, gasoline, convenience store, garage, stairs, door, Saturday. After they have time to write and probably remember fewer than half the words, tell them that chunking the information would make it all much easier. Then read them the following story. Mike yawned as he woke up, and reluctantly his feet hit the floor. Because he was hungry, he got a bowl of Cheerios and sat down in front of the television to watch the news before going to work. His white cat Marshmallow brushed against the box of cereal and knocked it to the floor. Mike grabbed a broom and began sweeping up the mess. He happened to glance at the clock and realized how late it was getting. He dashed to his bedroom and couldnt find any clean work clothes. He threw on his old blue jeans and a shirt, and then jumped in his car only to discover that the battery was almost dead. Mike glanced at his bicycle, but managed to push his car out into the street and finally got it started. The traffic lights werent with him. Every light took forever before it turned green, and then the bridge over the river was blocked by a passing tugboat. Next Mike waited behind a trash truck making its daily pickups and a city bus picking up many merry Christmas

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shoppers. Not surprisingly, his car needed gasoline, so Mike pulled into the first convenience store he saw. He finally arrived at the office buildings parking garage, bolted up the stairs toward the third floor, and discovered that all doors were locked. Why had he not realized it was Saturday? Now tell them you will read the story again but will leave out the underlined words and let the class supply them as you get to each one. You may want to try that twice. Then give them another 2 minutes on a clean sheet of paper to see how many words they remember now because they chunked the information. The wise old owl was proud of his new pupils and their accomplishments. It seems that dusty, old psychology of learning book stayed true to the theories of learning and teaching through the years. He knew that as Gagns theory had developed and changed through the years, so would his own teaching practices.

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