Educational+Psychology

The current content here has focused on the work of Benjamin Bloom.

I have been looking at the history of Educational Psychology and in particular the ideas and work of Plato, John Dewey, Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget.

The work of the great philosopher and mathematician included his thoughts on human psychology. Plato believed that knowledge would grow as a person experienced the world. Aristotle who worked closely with Plato and was regarded as his disciple held similar beliefs.

An interesting read i found was:

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1167115?uid=3738904&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104889238043

You will need your institutional log in details for access.

John Dewey ( 1859-1952), an American citizen and philosopher also reformed education in the United States through his ideas. One of the earliest ideas on designing a student centered classroom over subject oriented classrooms also came from Dewey.

This paper published in 1916 called 'Democracy and Education' by John Dewey, in particular chapter 24 provides more detail.

http://www.thefmly.org/img/demedu.pdf

I feel that Dewey's views on materials being appropriate and relevant to the learner inspired Vygotsky's work on ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development).

"the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers" (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86).

Piaget (1896-1980), another psychologist worked in the field of educational research for a large part of his career and developed the theory of cognitive development. Piaget's ideas on the four stages of intelligence development also gained wide acclaim.

Lev Vygotsky lived and worked at the same time as Piaget and his work was also focused on cognitive development. Vygotsky died at a young age but his work has been translated and shows a great worth even today. Vygotsky placed importance on the social and cultural aspects affecting cognitive development. This was somehting Piaget's work didn't take into consideration. More of this can be found here:

http://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html

**Constructivism**

====Constructivism and emerging online learning pedagogy: a discussion for formal to acknowledge and promote the informal ====

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">[|Constructivism and computer mediated communication] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">I found this article about Constructivism and Computer-Mediated Communication in Distance Education. I think it is very applicable for this course since there are students studying the DTCE master course on line.

__<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Bloom's Taxonomy** __

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**When I was researching Blooms Taxonomy I came across this idea of an updated digital version, as a DTCE student I found this particularly interesting! Called Bloom's Digital Taxonomy** it is an update to Bloom's Taxonomy which attempts to account for the new behaviours and actions emerging as technology advances. This Digital Taxonomy tries to account for the new processes and actions associated with Web 2.0 technologies, the exponential growth in information, increasing use of personal technologies or cloud computing. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Like Blooms original Taxonomy it isn't about the tools or technologies rather it is about using these to facilitate learning. Outcomes are measured by competence of use and **most** importantly the **quality of the process or product**. For example. Bookmarking a resource is of no value if the resource is inappropriate, invalid, out of date or inaccurate.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Bloom's Digital Taxonomy aims to lend itself to problem and project based learning where the student must work through the entire process of development and evaluation.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Blooms Digital Taxonomy

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">[|Bloom's Digital Taxonomy] by Andrew Churches

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">[|Bloom's Apps]

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">[|Visual Bloom's]

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<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Bloom's taxonomy