Concept Mapping Project

Concept: Authentic Assessment

Definition: Authentic assessment provides evidence of a student’s understanding and performance in the learning environment. Assessment measures should possess two characteristics: authenticity and trustworthiness. Authentic assessment is concerned with assessing content area defined in the course of study. Trustworthy assessment uses clearly established procedures for gathering evidence. Authentic assessment is a four –step process: identifying what to assess, collecting evidence, analyzing the evidence, and making a decision based on the analysis (Roblyer, 2003).

Application: Portfolios are a collection of a student’s work products over time, arranged so that they and others can see how their skills have developed and progressed. Portfolios are the assessment strategy of choice for today’s technology-integrated curriculum.

Concept: Community of Learners

Definition: Communities of learners is the type of classroom community effective teachers and students create in which students are motivated to learn and are actively involved in student centered learning activities. Teachers and students work collaboratively and purposefully as a “family” in which all the members respect and support each other’s learning (Roblyer, 2003).

Application: Students develop their own multimedia products and presentations, allowing students of wide varying abilities to make contributions on their on terms. This strategy has implications for enhancing students’ self-esteem and for increasing their willingness to spend more time on learning tasks.

Concept: Scaffolding

Definition: A Vygotskian idea stemming from the ideas of students learning from their culture and the of a zone of proximal development. In scaffolding the teacher finds out where a student is in their development and builds on their experiences. Tasks are at the difficulty where they are able to be accomplished with adult help, but are too hard for the student to accomplish by themselves. The level of help form the teacher adjusts to the performance of the student (Web Site 1).

Application: Teachers push a student to their potential by providing problems that the student has difficulty achieving or cannot achieve by themselves. This could come in math by doing problems that expand on difficult concepts. The teacher can scaffold by providing tips, steps, or shortcuts to solving the problem.

Concept: Anchored Instruction

Definition: A type of problem-based learning that uses a complex interesting situation as an anchor for learning (Woolfolk, 2001).

Application: After teaching a lesson of basic arithmetic functions, students, given various checkbook balances, could figure out if in certain situations they could buy certain items they desire (e.g. video games, concert tickets, etc.).

Concept: Authentic Activity

Definition: Tasks that have some connection to real life problems the students will face outside the classroom (Woolfolk, 2001).

Application: Instead of giving students worksheets for money math problems, set up a "store" in the class for the students to use their "money."

Concept: Transfer

Definition: Refers to the idea of learning information over a topic or for a situation or experience and being able to apply that gained knowledge to other topics, situations or experiences (e.g. transferring knowledge from society or technology to the classroom or vice versa, as well as between classes) (Roblyer, 2003).

Application: Using practical tasks such as balancing checkbooks to learn math concepts then transferring that learned knowledge to the real world when having to balance checkbooks or other expenses. Also Home-economics classes teaching sewing and cooking that can be applied to social situations

Concept: Metacognition

Definition: "Thinking about thinking." An elevated level of thinking in which students control their thinking processes in order to greater benefit their learning (Web Site 2).

Application: Having students brainstorm and plan an approach to a certain task.

Concept: Situated Learning

Definition: Students are given tasks that correlate with real world situations. Tasks are authentic (Web Site 3).

Application: Students learn math concepts while dealing with money in staged buyer/consumer situations.

Concept: Cooperative and Collaborative Learning

Defintion: Students work together in small groups to complete a challenging task. Each individual is held accountable and the group is assessed as a whole as well (Web Site 4).

Application: Have students do a group research project and presentation over an historical event.

Concept: Self-regulated learning

Defintion: Students make choices over tasks and set their own goals. They wisely use time and resources and adjust the difficulty to their needs (Web Site 5).

Application: Give students a choice of topics to work on and have them do what best benefits them in order to best obtain the knowledge.

Concept: Problem-Based Learning

Defintion: A teaching method where children are given real life problems and solve them through collaboration and brainstorming with their peers (Woolfolk. 2001).

Application: Give children a word problem and let them solve in collaborative groups without giving them an algorithm, or steps to solve the problem. After they have solved the problem, they share their solutions.

Concept: Generative Learning

Defintion: Active involvement in problem solving. Anchoring instruction in situations where students not only create answers to problems, but also generate many aspects of the problem statements. A term coined by researchers built on the concepts of situated cognition and collaborative learning (Roblyer, 2003).

Application: Problems may be posed in terms of specific goals like “how to develop an information package to help persuade classmates to stop littering the campus.

Concept: Discovery Learning

Definition: Constructivist approach that stresses exploration rather than merely getting the right answer (Roblyer, 2003).

Application: Legos, Tinkertoys, Logo, electronic tutors to allow exploration, provide assistance and feedback, rich learning environments to let learners manipulate and build.

Concept: Reciprocal Teaching

Definition: A method of teaching that is based on modeling, meant for instruction in reading comprehension strategies. By using this teaching style, students will be able to think critically about what they have read as well as show understanding. The process is composed of four parts: summarizing, asking a question, clarifying, and predicting (Woolfolk, 2001).

Application: This could be used after the students have read a novel to see if the students understood the material.

Concept: Cognitive Apprenticeship

Definition: This is where a experienced or master "teacher" provides modeling, demonstrations, and guidance to a less experienced learner which will lead to a less experienced learning gaining new knowledge (Woolfolk, 2001).

Application: Students who may not do well with the teacher leading the instruction may find it easier to learn from their peers.

Concept: Media Attributes

Definition: The description and analysis of the specific qualities of various types of educational tools used in classrooms. Fully evaluating how best to use different forms of media in the classroom is an essential consideration by all teachers. It is also essential to attempt to stay current as technology advances making new and exciting forms of multimedia and hypermedia available (Roblyer, 2003).

Application: Applications of the concepts of media attributes involves an understanding of how different types of media can best be used to enhance student learning is essential in today's high tech world. Media can vary from low tech chalkboard, overhead projector and books, to the complex use of multimedia and hypermedia.

Concept: Substantive Conversation

Definition: Substantive conversation instruction allows students to engage in extended conversational exchanges with the teacher and/or other peers about subject matter. Students must be given opportunities to discuss topics in a way that builds an improved and shared understanding (Roblyer, 2003).

Application: Discussing with students issues brought about with advancing technology such as copy write infringements, plagiarism or the dangers of identity theft or online predators.

Concept: Learning Heirarchy

Defintion: Learning that amounts to a building process. Lower level skills provide a necessary foundation for higher level ones (Roblyer, 2003).

Application: Teaching addition and subtraction before teaching multiplication and division.

Concept:Distributed Intelligence

Definition: Information sharing, assissted guidance. A group works together bringing in their own intelligences to solve a problem that thesingle individual had difficulty with or could not do alone (Web Site 6).

Application: A research project where each individualof the group researches a topic and then they bring
all their gathered information together to create anintegrated paper.





Concept: Multiple Perspectives 

Definition: Looking at a problem orsituation from several points of view. Everyone bringsin their own perspective on how they view the
situation to gain a more well-round intelligence(Robblyer, 2003).  

Application: A project where students have to research different views on a topic and them formulatetheir own view and bring them together in a report.

Sources:

Web Site 1: http://www.funderstanding.com/vygotsky.cfm

Web Site 2: www.gse.buffalo.edu/fas/shuell/cep564/Metacog.htm

Web Site 3:
www.edb.utexas.edu/mmresearch/Students97/Rutledge/html/situated_learning.html

Web Site 4: www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/month5/

Web Site 5: www.rit.edu/~609www/ch/faculty/self-reg.htm

Web Site 6: www.crossroads.georgetown.edu/vkp/resources/glossary/distributed.htm

Roblyer, M.D. Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching: Third Edition. Merrill Prentice Hall: Columbus, Ohio. 2003.

Woolfolk, A. Educational Psychology: Eighth Edition. Allyn and Bacon: Boston. 2001.