Module 11 Post 2

Let's take the example of a student learning to write in cursive for the first time.

First, the student would absorb a huge amount of information into his sensory memory - what the teacher is wearing, which posters are on the walls, what color shirts his classmates are wearing, how many desks are in the classroom, etc.  This is all in the student's sensory memory because he is not conciously thinking about all of it, but it is still part of his environment.  Most of this sensory information will be lost because it is not significant to the student at that particular time.

The teacher would start class by describing what cursive is, why it's important, when it is used, etc.  The student will bring this information into his working memory because he is paying attention to what the teacher is saying and is conciously thinking about it.

The teacher then begins to show the class how to make a cursive lowecase a.  She first draws it on the chalkboard so the students can visually see the letter, and then points out to the class that a cursive a looks similar to a regular a, only with a slight curve at the end.  The teacher did this because she wanted her students to make a connection to something they already knew - the letter a, not in cursive.  By explaining that the cursive a is similar to the regular a, students made a connection to previous knowledge, making it much easier to recall this information at a later time.

The teacher has her students practice tracing and writing the cursive a many times.  She does this every day for a week, until the students have repeated the excercise several times.  The students are encoding this information though rehearsal.  Finally this information works its way from the working memory to the long-term memory.  The more the students repeat the excercise, the most likely they will be to retrieve that information later.  For example, if the teacher next moves on to the letter e in cursive, the students will practice that many times, and still return to the a.  Because of the connections to previous knowledge (non-cursive a) and rehearsal (practice writing the letter repeatedly) the students will be able to retrieve their knowledge of the letter a in cursive.

Module 11 Post 1

The major ideas that come from Module 11 are the three stages of information processing: sensory memory, working memory, and long-term memory.  Sensory memory is all the insignificant things your brain observes during the course of a day, like how many chairs are in a room or the color shirt one of your friends was wearing.  You probably won't remember most of this information at the end of the day because your brain registered that it wasn't important enough to remember.  Working memory is something we are conciously thinking about and comes from a stimulus.  An example of working memory is studying something and remembering it during an exam the following day.  You probably won't remember the information from the test a month later, but it was still in your working memory the day of the test.  You can keep information in your working memory as long as you conciously think about it, so as soon as you stop thinking about the information for the test, you most likely won't remember it.  In order to remember something fully, the brain must encode it in the long-term memory.  There are several different ways to encode information and put in in your long-term memory, such as rehearsal. Finally, long-term memory allows us to hold the most information for the longest amount of time.

It is very important for teachers to understand how learning works because it will influence whether or not students really learn the material.  For example, many students will simply memorize information for a test and forget it the next day (short-term memory).  But if the teacher teaches it in a way that connects the exam material to something they've previously learned or a common experience shared by the students, they will be more likely to remember it (long-term memory).  The module also mentions that information we repeat over and over is more likely to be retrieved than information that isn't repeated.  I think this is also important for teachers.  For example, if a teacher tells her class that the US gained its freedom in 1776 only once the day before the test, the students would be less likely to remember it than if the teacher mentioned it every day leading up to the exam.

I am a little confused about the network and schema theories.  I think I generally understand the basic principles, but network theory doesn't really make sense to me.  The example given in the book was "Sarah is wearing my new raincoat," but how does pairing Sarah with new raincoat help you remember it better?

According to the Information Processing Theory, learning can be defined as a concious process of storing information.  Information you want to learn can be learned, and information you do not want/need to learn is easily forgotten.

Why is it that you can hear your name in a crowded room, even when you were previously having a separate conversation?  You can hear your name in a crowded room when you were having a separate conversation because of your sensory memory.  You sensory memory basically absorbs everything around you even though you might not be concious of it (for example, someone else's conversation).  You only become concious of the other people's conversation once you hear your name.  Once you are concious of something, it goes to your working memory.  This means if you wanted to join the conversation, you could remember it later.

Information Processing Blog 2

Sally is a third grade student. She is trying to learn about simple fractions. First, her sensory memory kicks in. She takes in all of her classroom surroundings such as the other students, the chalkboard, what the teacher looks like today, how her pencil fels in her hand, etc. Obviously this is not important for learning fractions and Sally quickly forgets all of this. Then, her working memory kicks in. Sally starts to recognize the patterns being used for the fractions and how the numbers relate to each other. She chunks together the like fractions such as 1/2 and 2/4 because she sees that these are the same and it is an easier way for her to look at things. She rehearses all of this information and links them together on her own as she is learning about them. Finally, she gets a test and her long term memory is activated. Sally remembers using visual examples in class with apples and candy and she also remembers baking with her mom and using the ingredients as fractions. She retrieves this information for her test from her long term memory.

Information Processing Blog 1

The big idea discussed in this chapter was the three-stage model of information processing: sensory memory, working memory, and long-term memory. Sensory memory has to do with our senses. Sight, touch, sound, taste, and smell all are components of our sensory memory. our sensory memory holds an unlimited amount of data exactly as we sense them. Our working memory has to do with the way we put this information to work. The working memory is when you purposefully try to remember things. Recall is a part of the working memory. Repetition and chunking are also strategies used in the working memory. The long term memory is where we store huge amounts of information and are able to store it for up to years at a time. Within the long term memory there is explicit knowledge and implicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge has to do with the information that we realize we are aware of and implicit knowledge has to do with the information buried within our brains. Memories are most easily retrieved from long term memory. The book also talks about most effective ways of teaching using memory from rehearsal which is least effective, to visual imagery which is most effective.

I had a question about rehearsal. In the book it states that rehearsal is the least effective technique when getting students to remember information, yet in my experience this is the most common technique teachers use especially in math. Everything that we did in math was drill-and-practice that involved learning and memorizing equations and plugging in different numbers. Did anyone else have this experience? 

According to Information Processing Theory, learning is storing information and being able to rehash this information when prompted to do so. One implication for teaching is that you could think that your students are learning when they really aren't. For instance, if they study for a test using repetition, this information is not being held in their long term memory and will most likely not be remembered after the test. Also, they are probably not understanding the meaning of what they are learning. 

Repetition is not the best way to learn something because you may not actually be learning the information. By repeating the same thing over and over again you are just understanding the surface meaning. You will not understand how this relates to other things and why you ned to learn it and you will most likely forget the information shortly afterwards. For instance, for vocabulary tests most students use repetition to memorize the words instead of learning the words and storing them in their memory. After the test is over, students will most likely not remember these words anymore. 

Module 11 Post 2

A girl wants to learn how to french braid hair. She's watched her sister do her own hair and has watched many YouTube videos. This has gone through her sensory memory- she's seen how the hands work and how they're supposed to pull separate parts. Her sensory memory has focused on the importance of her hands grabbing certain parts of the hair and has filtered out the rest of the hair. Once she's finally mastered the process of french braiding, rehearsal is the only way to completely store the information. This is maintenance behavior because she's just repeating a set of learned information. The process of french braiding is committed to long term memory and will be at a high activation level when she's asked to braid her sister's hair now. It's a recognition task now because she's being ask to retrieve information she's previously learned.

Learning Theory Blog Post 1

Information processing is about memory and how we learn things. Teachers need to know how people can memorize things in order to learn that way they are able to teach in effective ways. There are a three stages of memories listed. One is sensory memory which picks up on what is around us. It is taking in everything around you, like the walls, decorations on the walls, and furniture. Another one is working memory where we use things such as repetition to remember stuff. In the working memory we have to use information we got from the sensory memory. This goes to your long term memory.

Do most people have the same strategies? Can people use more than one strategy successfully?

Learning is when you can remember what you were taught and also storing it for future use.

Repetition is not the best way to learn something because you are not connecting it with anything, so you will not be able to store it in your long term memory.

Module 11 Post 1

This chapter is about the theory of information processing. This theory focuses on the mind and how our memory works to retain information. The theory also states that there are three areas of memory that information passes through. Sensory memory has to do with all of the stimuli we take in. Depending on what information we pay attention to, it processes to the working memory. The working memory is the place where the information is put to work- the phonological loop helps process and repeat auditory information, the visuospatial sketchpad stores and rehearses visual and spatial information and the episodic buffer helps combine everything from the previous two into a single representation. After much rehearsal and encoding, information from the working memory is finally transferred into the long-term memory where the information is stored indefinitely. Different people, especially young students, process and remember things differently so the information processing theory describes many methods to help students pay attention and process efficiently, such as focusing lessons and classroom activities on their developmental abilities to pay attention.
How can dreams store themselves much like vivid memories even though a person hasn't necessarily experienced all the auditory and visual aspects? Does it pass through the sensory and working memory to be stored in long term, just like other experiences?
Simply, information processing theorists believe that learning comes from cognitive processes and what we, as human beings, decide to pay attention to in our environment. These theorists focus less on the external behaviors we commit and focus their attention on what information the mind takes in.
People forget things for three reasons:
Sometimes encoding from the working memory to the long term memory fails, which means the information never made it to the long term memory to be stored. New information fades quickly and evens out in a process called "information decay." Retrieval failure happens when stored information is unavailable because we can't find the mental record of it.

Learning theory blog 2

A child is learning how to field a ground ball in baseball.  Being an avid fan of Derek Jeter, he has watched him successfully field a ground ball from shortstop multiple times. He studies every move Jeter makes from bending down to field the ball, to throwing it to first base. This is an example of storing information and using what he has learned in attempt to perfecting his baseball skills. He practices these skills everyday, using repetition to be able to field a ground ball the correct way like Derek Jeter. With continuous practice of fielding a ground ball he will consistently perform this task with accuracy for a long time.

Learning Theory Blog Post 2

Using the information processing theory model, a child would be presented with information, that the teacher stresses as an important lesson.  Therefore, the student focuses on this topic.  From there, multiple lessons on the topic, and using different medias and strategies to get the topic across to the students, will cause the students to use their working memory.  After much rehearsal, this topic will move from the working memory into the long term memory.  If the student wants to retrieve the memory, words or actions will jog his/her memory and cause him/her to remember the topic.

Learning Theory Blog Post 1

This chapters focus is on information processing.  This has to do with memory, how people remember things, and how people learn things.  As future educators, this is important to know, because our job is to allow students to learn and retain as much as possible.  And to do this, we have to know what to teach, and how to most effectively teach it.  Throughout the course of a lesson, how a teacher teaches a topic, will affect how each student retains and remembers the information.  Because, each student goes about remembering things differently.  Firstly, there is sensory memory, which has no capacity.  The sensory memory picks up on our environment, and very little of what our sensory memory picks up, do we retain.  Sensory memory is just taking in the environment, however, to actually remember something, we have to focus on that thing.  From there, the information that we focus on moves into our working memory, where tactics such as chunking and repetition are used to try to remember the thing we have focused on.  For example, in our classroom, we have two coat racks in the back of the room.  We walk past them everyday, and our sensory memory picks up on them, but we have never focused on them.  When it is brought to our attention that we have two coat racks in the back of the room, we are now focusing on the coat racks, and this moves into our working memory to be processed.  Our long term memory is also unlimited and contains academic facts, experiences in ones life, how-to's and skills, and the understanding of how things work.  This enables us to recall facts, remember childhood experiences, and allows us to remember how to ride a bike without being taught every time.

One question I have concerning this chapter is, how do we know for certain that there are three compartments of our memory?  How is one certain how each of these compartments works, and if these are the only compartments, and how each of these functions are carried out?

According to the information processing theory, learning is remembering and retaining what has been taught.

Repetition is not the best way to remember something because it does not allow you to make connections with what you are trying to remember.  Making connections that are meaningful to each individual helps him/her to remember each fact.

Post 2

A child wants to learn how to juggle a soccer ball. He has seen it done multiple times. On the television, on the computer by using youtube, and even at his own soccer practice. He pays close attention as to where to hit the ball on his foot. How the ball rotates after he has made contact with it. He uses the the encoding strategy rehearsal. Everyday before practice he would work on hitting it on the right spot of his foot with the right amount of force. After practice he stays late and repeats the same thing over and over again. After multiple days and weeks of practice he finally mastered the trick of juggling a soccer ball. Even though he can perform this task he continues to do it so it wont be forgotten down the road.

Post 1

This chapter of the book dealt with information and how we process it. Each person stages inside their brain when it comes to information processing. The first stage of this three step process is the sensory memory. In the sensory memory your brain is registering everything. From the color of the room to the smell of the person next to you and the information your instructor is saying to you. The second stage is called the working memory. In this stage we put the knowledge that we received from the sensory memory to work. This part of the stage you can retrieve relevant information from the last stage, your long term memory. It gives multiple examples using helpful hints for you to process and learn certain things which are called mnemonics. These can  be acronyms, abbreviations of things, like PEMDAS Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally, for remembering the order of operation in math.
The one thing that I'm wondering in this chapter is when its talking about the rehearsal process. "It states that Individuals can retain new information through, Rehearsal, or repeating the information over and over to themselves. Children begin to phonologically rehearse at around 7 years old. I'm wondering if that includes both sex, or do girls pick up things quicker than guys.
Learning is being able take in information, be able to change its form, store it and retrieve the information later when needed. They compare it to how a computer works.
People forget due to not use the information for over a long period of time. Some people may call this the decay theory. If the task isn't used over and over then eventually it will go away. A play could be an example. You read your lines over and over until you memorize them word for word. After the play is over you stop looking at and reading your lines. Over time you will eventually forget most if not all of the lines in that play.

Information Processing Blog 2

A child learning to tie its own shoe, is familiar with the texture, smell of what a shoe is like. For years, their shoe has been tied for them and they have seen other people tie it. When the child learns in class to make two loops and knot them together, it will stay in their head for about two seconds and leave which is a loss in the sensory memory. The child begins to practice tying the shoe, making two bunny ears and knotting them together, every single time the shoe comes untied, this becomes part of their working memory that is taking much attention and pattern recognization from rehersing the bunny song the teacher taught. When the teacher blew her whistle for reccess to be over, the student tried tying their untied shoes in a panick, and failed, which is due to an encoding failure. After practicing many more times, the student encodes the information to it’s long term memory and retrieve the process of how to tie their shoe whenever they need it tied.  

Information Processing post 2

A child is learning how to brush his teeth.
First he watches his parents do it this is visual input into the sensory memory, but until he is old enough for his parents to teach him the steps he does not pay attention enough for it to stay in his memory. When he is old enough though his parents start to brush his teeth with him telling him the steps like putting the toothpaste on the toothbrush and rubbing up and down. At first this process is slow because each of the bits of brushing his teeth is separated so it takes up more of his working memory but as he rehearses the action of brushing his teeth more frequently the bits turn into chunks and he can start to think about other things while brushing his teeth. This transition means that the act of brushing his teeth has made it into his long-term memory.

Information Processing Blog Post 2

A student is trying to learn how to read a sentence in a book.  First the letters are inputted into his mind through his sense of vision.  Next he pays attention only to one sentence so everything else is lost but that one sentence.  Next he groups the sentence into different words.  Once he has done that he thinks of it in a different context.  For example if the sentence was, a black dog ran fast, he would think of the sentence of a dog running as a black blur and it would be put into his long-term memory.

Information Processing Blog Post 1

The main focus of the chapter is about memory and the different processes/stages in making memories for just a second or many years.  There are four main steps that make up memory: input, sensory memory, working memory, and long-term memory.  Input is any sensory information that causes a signal from your nervous system to your brain.  The next is sensory memory.  This is when all the memory that you pay attention to is retained, but the memories you do not pay attention to is lost.  Working memory is as basic as conscious thought.  Usually a person can hold 7-10 bits at a time in this process.  The best way to make working memory is through chunking and rehearsal.  Long-term memory is any memory you hold for more than a minute.  A memory becomes a long-term memory through encoding working memory, so it is working memory before it becomes long-term until it is learned.  So a teacher needs to know that it has to go through all of these processes before a student learns the information.

Do some strategies work better for some people than others?  For example does organization work better for someone while elaboration works better for another?

Learning is all about making connections with what you are learning and your other senses.  This is the best way for students to learn that fastest and make their memories into long-term memories.

People forget things because we do not have enough space to remember everything.  We only remember things that we pay attention to.

Information Processing post 1

     The Information Processing Theory discusses how students' memories are vital to learning. This theory says that information goes through three stages in the brain: sensory memory, working memory and long-term memory. Sensory memory encompasses all the things in one's environment; such as the color of the walls and doors, the smells of the room, what furniture is in the room, and everything that a person is sensing falls into the sensory memory. But the brain cannot retain all of that information in the forefront of the mind so a lot of that information is lost so the working memory can think of things other than the color of the carpet. The working memory also has a limited capacity, it is said to hold 5 to 9 bits of information at once. This stage of memory takes what is being focused on in the sensory memory and making sense of it. The working memory is also responsible for connecting the things in front of one to his or her long-term memory. The long-term memory(LTM) is what is responsible for holding all that a person has truly learned, but sometimes retrieving that information can be difficult. For bits of information to make it to the LTM they have to be encoded in a meaningful way that is easy to retrieve, otherwise one cannot really remember. The LTM has an unlimited capacity and can store for unlimited amounts of time.
      I am not sure that I understand why people forget things other than there just is not enough space in the working memory to keep it there, connect it to something in the long-term memory and then encode it so it stays in LTM.
     According to the Information Processing Theory learning occurs when information makes it to the long-term memory. Every student has a different way of studying things so they remember best when test time rolls around. Some students use mnemonics, others chunking, but for bits of information to make it to the long-term memory a connection has to be made. One way of doing this is through multi-sensory teaching. When a teacher connects letter characters to the sounds they make, for example, a student can connect the sight of the character to the sound the letter makes and encode that in a chunk that can be saved for later. This is also why when things are put to tune (i.e. ABC's) students can remember them better, because they are making a stronger, multi-sensory connection between the characters, sounds, and tune.
     Information Processing theorists would discourage teachers from having their students just repeat something until it sticks because according to their theory repetition is completely ineffective for learning. This is because the students are not necessarily learning the meaning behind what they are repeating, simply the order in which they repeat it. This makes it incredibly difficult for a student to take that information from the long-term memory(if it makes it there) and connect it to new information and be able to think critically.

Informational Processing Blog Post 2

A child is learning how to tie her shoes. First an adult shows her how to do it. This counts as visual input. Unfortunately, the child will not be able to remember exactly how to do it after only watching it once. This is because some of that visual input will be lost. Then the child will be taught again how to tie the shoe and given the opportunity to try it herself. This is an example of giving attention to input. Then the child will practice and practice the skill until she can ties her shoes on her own. This is an example of rehearsal. The skill will be encoded into her long-term memory, and then retrieved every time in life when she needs to tie her shoes.

Information Processing Blog Post 1

This chapter deals with the way that we process information. The brain processes information in a way that is very similar to a computer. We have three different stages of processing information: sensory memory, working memory, and long-term memory. The sensory memory is what registers all the stimuli that you encounter every second of every day. It processes the smells that you smell, the sounds that you hear, the sights you see, the things you taste, and everything you feel. Most of the information that is put into your sensory memory is lost, but some of it is passed to the working memory. The working memory is where the information that we process gets put to use. The working memory helps us to remember things that we have seen or heard. It pulls pieces of task-relevant information from our brain whenever we need it. Another thing that occurs in the working memory is a process called encoding. Encoding is when information in prepared for long-term storage. After the encoding has been completed, information is stored in the long-term memory. Once information has been stored there, it can be saved for weeks, months, and even years.

One question that I had during this chapter was in regard to a certain type of retrieval error. Reconstruction error is when someone can't remember all of the details about a certain memory, but then with out knowing it  fills in the missing pieces with guesses and assumptions. If this is the case, how can a person decipher which memories are completely accurate or not?

Repetition is not the best way to remember useful pieces of information for long periods of time. When using repetition, the information that is being repeated does not actually get encoded in the long-term memory. This  does not happen because the information that is being repeated is not being associated with other schema of that person's life, therefore, the brain does not remember it nearly as well.

Information Processing Blog Post 1

This chapter discusses to the theory of information processing, which deals with how the brain uses the senses to bring information in, retain it, and recall what is important. There are three big concepts, sensory memory, working memory, and long term memory. Everything that is seen, touched, heard, felt, smelt, through the senses goes through the sensory memory. It collects all the information at an unconscious level, which is either discarded or used in the working memory. The working memory consists of the active conscious that our mind brings attention to, or retrieves information to recall it again. To keep this information, we go through an encoding process that sorts the material into something that we can store in the long term memory. The theory describes a conclusion of why when students are presented with the same information, that each mind processes the information, and takes attention to different topics differently.

If something awful happened to you in a specific room or building that lead to a depression, would many years later the retrieval cues be strong enough to sink you back into depression?

According to information processing theory, learning take place through the senses that has a meaning, can be practiced, and retrieved when desired. To determine what is “learned” there must be retrieval of the information that was presented. As a teacher, one way a student can retain information is using mnemonics, which connects a relationship to something meaningful of prior knowledge, to the new information that they want retained. While teaching new topics, it will be important to keep the attention of the class, use relevant examples for the students to relate what they are learning to something that they already know.  

In a crowded room, your sensory memory is taking in all the information around you, tossing most of it away. But when something that is familiar, such as the name you answer, it stimulates a response for your attention to shift.