Month: October 2021

EDCI335 learning design II

I am writing a post about inquiry-based learning.

This learning method is more targeted. Instructors do not need to teach everything to the learners. Learners read the learning materials and ask questions. The instructors teach them according to their questions and the part of knowledge that they don’t understand. Each learner’s comprehension ability and advantages are different, so the difficult contents each one finds are also different. If it is a direct instruction, some learners may think they are wasting time because they already understand what they are teaching. Other learners may think that the explanation is not detailed enough. This results in a waste of instructors’ resources and learners’ time.

Nonetheless, inquiry-based learning is only suitable for small classes. Imagine a class with hundreds of people, there is no way for the instructors to teach all students based on their questions. There is too much work load and is less efficient than direct instruction.

Overall, I think inquiry-based learning is more effective in small-class instruction but not suitable for big classes.

EDCI338 post#5

I think I can build an effective personal learning network through the following points.

  • Pursue elites with high quality and diversity
  • Looking for high-quality elites and establishing reliable relationships with them is very important for personal learning networks. In addition to high quality, diversity is also important so that I can ask for help when I face any problem.

  • Talk less and listen more

Talking too much about my strengths will make others in my PLN feel dangerous. Others may feel that I want to get a lot from them, so they don’t want to continue to associate with me. I need to give others more opportunities to talk, so that I can learn from them and get closer with them.

  • Maintaining relationships is more important than developing new ones

Socializing is nothing more than meeting new ones and maintaining old ones. Both are important, but maintaining relationships is more important. People are addicted to social activities and parties, but they don’t sincerely spend time talking deeply with others. Only by deeply understanding each other in the personal learning network can I make better use of it.

EDCI338 post#4

With the development of technology, social media has become more and more diverse. These large number of social networks are forming an online city. In this “city”, we are building many personal learning networks. At present, the major social networks include Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, which constitute our diverse social networks. In these different social networks, we share different things, because the people we want to share information are different.

We share more life dynamics on Facebook, and the audience is more our family and friends. What we can see and learn is also more close to our hobbies. Instagram is even more so. We will share some pictures and small videos in life, and we will also see sharing in line with our own interests and hobbies. For example, I like playing golf. I often watch some golf teaching videos to learn actions and playing methods. For another example, I like food. I often watch more videos of food bloggers to learn cooking skills. In addition to these two large social networks, some social networks are more differentiated. For example, Athlinks is a social network for people who love sports. For a man who loves running, Athlinks has become a circle of friends when he runs. This social network automatically imports his running results and sports preferences, and more simply shares some relevant information, such as a pair of running shoes he recently bought or a set of absurd running routes he designed. Other users can learn some professional knowledge from his sharing. These social networks form a part of our personal learning network that is closer to life and interests. In contrast, there are some social networks closer to our career.

LinkedIn is a social network with a very unique purpose. Walking into LinkedIn is like walking into a recruitment market or a formal social activity. I will be very reserved in it. I will only share some career related or employment related information. Moreover, I will only keep in touch with some other professionals I think are relevant. On this social network, my learning content is more professional. It forms the part of my personal learning network close to my career.

In addition to these social media mentioned above, I also use many other apps with social functions. For example, when I buy a book on Amazon, I can see the messages of other buyers and learn about the general content and style of the book, which is also a part of my personal learning network. Therefore, on the whole, my personal learning network is very diverse. I think with the development of society, this diversity will only become more and more obvious, which is beneficial to the construction of my personal learning network.

EDCI335 post Oct.3

In order to study in Canada, I guess every foreign student needs to learn English and pass the English proficiency test, at least before I go abroad. For me who lived in China for more than ten years, the process of learning English was very difficult. There were many challenges I met at that time. Here I choose one that impressed me the most.

Memorizing English words is the basis of learning English. Words to English are like gasoline to an airplane. An airplane can’t fly without gasoline. In the process of memorizing words, I have encountered great difficulties, and if this difficulty is not overcome, I can’t continue to learn English. The difficulty of memorizing words is that there are too many words. They often stare at one word for a few minutes, look at other words, and then forget when they come back. Although I didn’t write down many words, I still read most of the word books. After reading thousands of words, I found that many words have similarities. For example, many words begin with “in”, which means negative. Many other words begin with “im”, which means inward, and “ex”, which means outward. At that time, I wondered if the efficiency would be much faster if similar words were sorted together and memorized. If I recite words in alphabetical order as I did before, I can only recite them one by one, which will be much less efficient. Therefore, I tried the new method that I came up. Through the new method, I only need to memorize a “port” to memorize the meaning of “import” and “export”.

This method really makes me memorize words much more efficiently, and adds more fun to my learning of English. I overcame the difficulties in my study in this way. I think this method can be summarized as flexibly changing learning methods to achieve better learning results. This way can not only solve my learning difficulties at that time, but also expand to more learning fields.