Exam Question 1 November 11, 2007

Final Exam Networked Learning

1. a) www.learning-project.pbwiki.com www.learningproject.wordpress.com

b) Discuss 5 of the key issues you had to struggle with to get this project to work?

1.  
   • Working with others, especially when I am only on campus 1 day per week, I found it hard to find the time to sit down and plan what we had to do. The wiki and the blog are meant to be collaborative and this worked once we had discussed what we were going to do with the project, but finding the time outside of class to actually discuss and plan what the project would be on etc… was difficult.
   • Rewording the content for younger students. Being in university where we are expected to write at academic levels, I found it difficult to go from that to writing questions for year 7, in a way that they could understand, trying to simplify the question.
   • Finding suitable resources for year 7. There is a lot of material on the internet that is unsuitable, and trying to find information that is worthwhile and suitable for year 7 was difficult. Along with that finding resources and posting them on the blog and wiki without doing all of the research for the children, finding a balance between that as well.
   • Creating a suitable website/blog/wiki where the students learn ICT and answering the question. It is hard to find a balance between the ICT component and answering the question.
   • Trying to establish higher order thinking. This was hard because their parents are going to be helping them. I tried to give hints and suggestions about what areas they should be looking in and how to answer the question. I separated the question into 3 different sections, with the aim of each section of questions getting harder, therefore trying to promote higher order thinking.

Higher order thinking  ‘Higher-order thinking requires students to manipulate information and ideas in ways that transform their meaning and implications. This transformation occurs when students combine facts and ideas in order to synthesise, generalise, explain, hypothesise or arrive at some conclusion or interpretation. Manipulating information and ideas through these processes allows students to solve problems and discover new (for them) meanings and understandings. When students engage in the construction of knowledge, an element of uncertainty is introduced into the instructional process and makes instructional outcomes not always predictable; i.e., the teacher is not certain what will be produced by students. In helping students become producers of knowledge, the teacher’s main instructional task is to create activities or environments that allow them opportunities to engage in higher-order thinking.’http://education.qld.gov.au/corporate/newbasics/html/pedagogies/intellect/int1a.htmlc) Evaluate the worth of the collaborative nature of this project in the light of the motivation that comes from within the person Motivation is a reason or †set of reasons for engaging in a particular behavior, especially human behavior as studied in psychology and neuropsychology. The reasons may include basic needs (e.g., food, water, shelter) or an object, goal, state of being, or ideal that is desirable, which may or may not be viewed as “positive,” such as seeking a state of being in which pain is absent. The motivation for a behavior may also be attributed to less-apparent reasons such as altruism or morality.According to Geen (1995), motivation refers to the initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of human behavior.

Intrinsic motivation is when people engage in an activity, without obvious external incentives, such as a hobby.Intrinsic motivation has been studied by educational psychologists since the 1970s, and numerous studies have found it to be associated with high educational achievement and enjoyment by students. There is currently no universal theory to explain the origin or elements of intrinsic motivation, and most explanations combine elements of Bernard Weiner’s attribution theory, Bandura’s work on self-efficacy and other studies relating to locus of control and goal orientation. Thus it is thought that students are more likely to intrinsically motivated if they:

• Attribute their educational results to internal factors that they can control (e.g. the amount of effort they put in),
• Believe they can be effective agents in reaching desired goals (i.e. the results are not determined by dumb luck),
• Are interested in mastering a topic, rather than just rote-learning to achieve good grades.

Note that the idea of reward for achievement is absent from this model of intrinsic motivation, since rewards are an extrinsic factor.In knowledge-sharing communities and organizations, people often cite altruistic reasons for their participation, including contributing to a common good, a moral obligation to the group, mentorship or ‘giving back’. In work environments, money may provide a more powerful extrinsic factor than the intrinsic motivation provided by an enjoyable workplace.The most obvious form of motivation is coercion, where the avoidance of pain or other negative consequences has an immediate effect. Extreme use of coercion is considered slavery. While coercion is considered morally reprehensible in many philosophies, it is widely practiced on prisoners, students in mandatory schooling, within the nuclear family unit (on children), and in the form of conscription. Critics of modern capitalism charge that without social safety networks, wage slavery is inevitable. However, many capitalists such as Ayn Rand have been very vocal against coercion^{[citation needed]}. Successful coercion sometimes can take priority over other types of motivation. Self-coercion is rarely substantially negative (typically only negative in the sense that it avoids a positive, such as undergoing an expensive dinner or a period of relaxation), however it is interesting in that it illustrates how lower levels of motivation may be sometimes tweaked to satisfy higher ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Intrinsic_and_extrinsic_motivation

This project is especially well structured in light of motivation, because people will want to learn the web 2.0 technology so they don’t fall behind with society, and children will want to learn web 2.0 because they won’t want to be different from their friends and for fear of not completing the project, they will get into trouble, or even fail. Though the last 2 points are extrinsic motivation, it still plays a role in motivating the person.

Click here or on the Vodpod, to get links to all the youtube and teacher tube videos relating to motivation With the following movie the same applies to education, not just the lake and science.