NG KHENG SAN

1. My Picture

2. My name: NG KHENG SAN

3. My role in the SAF: Executive Officer Institute of Maritime Operations and Systems

4. Why I am taking the Specialist Diploma: To learning more how people learn and how instructor can make people learn better

5. What I hope to gain from the New Media Pedagogy course: How to use new media to engage new generation of learners who are tech savy

6. My notes and questions:

• Where does knowledge reside? How do people learn?

  • Cognitivism: Cognitivism focuses on the inner mental activities – opening the “black box” of the human mind is valuable and necessary for understanding how people learn. Mental processes such as thinking, memory, knowing, and problem-solving need to be explored. Knowledge can be seen as schema or symbolic mental constructions. Learning is defined as change in a learner’s schemata.

    • A response to behaviorism, people are not “programmed animals” that merely respond to environmental stimuli; people are rational beings that require active participation in order to learn, and whose actions are a consequence of thinking. Changes in behavior are observed, but only as an indication of what is occurring in the learner’s head. Cognitivism uses the metaphor of the mind as computer: information comes in, is being processed, and leads to certain outcomes.

  • Constructivism: The learner is an information constructor. People actively construct or create their own subjective representations of objective reality. New information is linked to to prior knowledge, thus mental representations are subjective. A reaction to didactic approaches such as behaviorism and programmed instruction, constructivism states that learning is an active, contextualized process of constructing knowledge rather than acquiring it. Knowledge is constructed based on personal experiences and hypotheses of the environment. Learners continuously test these hypotheses through social negotiation. Each person has a different interpretation and construction of knowledge process. The learner is not a blank slate (tabula rasa) but brings past experiences and cultural factors to a situation.

    • NOTE: A common misunderstanding regarding constructivism is that instructors should never tell students anything directly but, instead, should always allow them to construct knowledge for themselves. This is actually confusing a theory of pedagogy (teaching) with a theory of knowing. Constructivism assumes that all knowledge is constructed from the learner’s previous knowledge, regardless of how one is taught. Thus, even listening to a lecture involves active attempts to construct new knowledge.

    • Keywords: Learning as experience, activity and dialogical process; Problem Based Learning (PBL); Anchored instruction; Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD); cognitive apprenticeship (scaffolding); inquiry and discovery learning.

  • Connectivism: The integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.

    • Connectivism is driven by the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations. New information is continually being acquired. The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital. The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical.

    • Principles of connectivism:

      • Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.

      • Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.

      • Learning may reside in non-human appliances.

      • Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known

      • Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.

      • Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.

      • Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.

      • Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

    • Connectivism also addresses the challenges that many corporations face in knowledge management activities. Knowledge that resides in a database needs to be connected with the right people in the right context in order to be classified as learning. Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism do not attempt to address the challenges of organizational knowledge and transference.

• What is the link to new media and new media strategies?

7. My individual presentation/assignment:

8. My reflection (use comments feature below or embed a blog here)

3 D Virtual world

virtual to hold conference, virtual presentation, collaborative workshop, team building, explore new teaching strategies, interactive tool for learning,

real time environment, encourage introvert learner to learn more actively, create connection and networking,