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New Ways to Learn

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Join host Susan McKinnell and University of Minnesota guest experts as they discuss how technology is changing the way we teach and learn. The guests are Brad Cohen, Ph.D., an instructional designer at the Digital Media Center, and Jenny Blaine from the University Technology Training Center.

Guests

For Your Files

Jenny Blaine, a technology specialist at the U said much of today's teaching and learning is moving out of the classroom:

Just so you know almost everything is moving to be web based now. As far as most new technologies and different types of things are being delivered via the internet through a web browser because most people have that already on their computers. So all you really need is an ISP, you know, a connection. And you need, so a connection to the Internet and you need a space on a server and so you can take classes that way.

Brad Cohen, an instructional technology consultant, said blogging can be used as a teaching device:

Blogging is kind of like an online journal. But it has a high degree of interactivity. So that if I start publishing my thoughts in that system in a blogging system. It very easily allows other people to come and read what I've written and respond to it. And it creates a kind of community around areas of interest.

While other media can be included in blogging, it is really mostly writing:

Writing is a form of thinking and so a properly orchestrated writing assignment would get students to think and to develop to communicate. And a blogging system really does all those things, encourages all of those things.

Jenny and Brad discussed another teaching method:

Sort of combining quizzing and practicing things with games & simulations has become a popular thing these days, to sort of make it more fun. One of the reasons people go to games and simulations is because it does something which is very important to learning - which is create an internal, a very natural internal motivation. Kids will play games for hours - i t you can develop a learning environment for adults and children which is well designed then they're drawn in the way they are in games that are fun, but they're learning in the process.

Jenny discussed one of the advantages to learning with some of these new methods:

That's one of the great advantages of these online learning spaces is, as I think you mentioned earlier, creating a community. You can have people around the world actually learning together in the same space.