Teaching and Learning: Three (3) Theories

(Note: this is an assignment for a Master's course at K-State, EDCI 887: Professional Seminar I, taught by Dr. Rosemary Talab.)

Assignment Description
Choose three learning theories from the TIP database and relate them to distance education.

Assignment
I chose these three theories:

1. Elaboration, by Reigeluth
2. Multiple Intelligences, by the constant Gardner
3. Social Learning, by Bandura

Here's my entire paper (pdf).

Why Distance Education?

(Note: this is an assignment for a Master's course at K-State, EDCI 887: Professional Seminar I, taught by Dr. Rosemary Talab)

Assignment Description
Write a synopsis of a point of view on why or why not schools, universities, countries, etc., do or do not need distance education, based on your readings, personal experiences, your article, listed resources or resources of your own.

Assignment
Available here (pdf, ~800 words).

Bandura's Social Learning Theory

Note: this is an assignment for a Master's course at K-State, EDCI 887: Professional Seminar I, taught by Dr. Rosemary Talab.

Assignment Description
Learn and explain one theory using MuseumBox, VoiceThread, Slideshare, or a similar program.

Assignment
I made this presentation using SlideShare. Click MENU to select the FULL SCREEN option, if that's your bag.

Bandura's Social Learning Theory

View more presentations from Tyler Stubenhofer.

My Math Videos for JCHS

I made several math videos for school-wide use at Junction City High School, a diverse 6A Kansas high school of roughly 1700 students. JCHS is well known in the area both for the district's investments in technologies and teachers' uses of technologies. I taught there for two years and was fortunate to come into a nice situation where equipment and software were available to me and there was a need for someone to make some videos. I got a lot of support from my principal and fellow teachers so I did it.

Of course I couldn't have done it without the groundwork already laid down by the School Improvement Team chairperson. Before I arrived she had put together numerous SmartBoard Notebook files complete with standards-based questions. I simply tweaked these to make my videos. Really, I got the fun part.

Teachers across the building showed these videos and then I'd try and throw them up on YouTube, mainly for my own pleasure. Here they are in chronological order:

Symmetric Property of Equality (2008)


Parallel and Perpendicular Lines (2008)


Measures of Central Tendency and Stem-and-Leaf Plots (2009)


Slope-Intercept Form (2009)


Scatter Plots (2009)


Zero Product Property (2009)


Probability and Odds with Shaq (2010)

6 Mobile Apps for Distance Education

Note: this is an assignment for a Master's course at K-State, EDCI 887: Professional Seminar I, taught by Dr. Rosemary Talab.

Assignment Description
What, if any, mobile apps can be used for teaching at a distance?

Assignment
Cell phones and other mobile devices, such as iPod Touches, are much more than they appear; making calls is only one of the thousands of uses for an iPhone. I found some Apple apps that could prove useful for Distance Education (DE). This is a small list and I'm sure there are many more out there.

Online Learning > Face-to-Face Learning?

Yes, according to a U.S. Department of Education study.

From the study:

A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.

Potential effect(s) on K-12 education: uncertain. The following was in the study's abstract:

An unexpected finding was the small number of rigorous published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning conditions for K–12 students. In light of this small corpus, caution is required in generalizing to the K–12 population 
because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education).

The New York Times wrote about the study in this August 19th article.