The End

Wow, the semester is almost over, so this will be my final Educational Psychology blog. I enjoyed learning about education psychology and blogging about it. I liked reflexing what I learned in class and relating it to my own life, and giving my opinions. I hope you enjoyed my blog, as well. I learnt a lot about educational psychology and also I learnt a lot about my views about educational psychology. What I learnt in educational psychology I will be able to take with me into my future career and also other parts of my life. Becoming an elementary teacher is very  important to me and learning about: professional skills, Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development, Vygotsky’s Theory, Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory, Erikson’s Stages of Human Development, Kohlberg’s Levels and Stages of Moral Development, IQ, Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, diversity in the classroom, gender ideals, special education, learning disabilities, operant conditioning, functional analysis, memory, study strategies, cognitive information, cooperative learning, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, motivation, learn-centred planning and instruction and any other material we learnt is relevant in my life and my future career. Therefore, I can take the information I learnt in this class and apply it for years to come. I thoroughly enjoyed the class and blogging. I hope you enjoyed reading it!

Learning-Centred Planning and Instruction

Learning-centred planning and instruction shifts the learning to teacher centred learning to the student centred learning. It benefits student’s cognitions and meta-cognitions. It is also good for motivation, developmental and social needs and it is good for individual differences. To me this is very similar in student centred learning and I do not really see the difference, as they are both shifting the learning from teacher centred to student/learner centred. They both can use problem or projected based approaches. I think school is gradually moving to learning-centred planning/ student centred learning, as when I was in grade 12 my class was one of the first classes to have a new social studies curriculum, which was more projected based and we taught ourselves the material by doing a project then presenting it to the class. We had guidance for our teacher, but we found the information ourselves. Then the teacher would discuss what we learnt with us. It was more work for me as a student, but I still remember what I learnt in grade 12 social studies. Therefore, I think learning-centred planning and instruction is beneficial for students, as it more interactive for the students and they are more invested in their work.
We watched another TED talk video in class today where Sugata Mitra talked about learner-centred planning and instruction. Here is the video:

Mitra shows how kids teach themselves. Children can teach themselves, but I think they still need the guidance of teachers to teach them what they need to know to function in our society and prepare them for the real world. Children can for sure teach themselves, but it will be things that they are interested in. The children in the video were interested in the computer in the wall and that is why they learnt how to use it. Someone told me when computers and internet came out it was said that computers would replace teachers. Computers and internet have been out for quite a while and we still have teachers and schools. Therefore, I think teachers will never be replaced, but maybe their role will change, as more of the courses will maybe on computers but there will still need to be someone to run the course. Teacher’s roles are also changing by shifting their teaching role to be more of a guide for students and have someone to talk to if they have a question. This reminds me of more of a college level learning, as the instructor is there if you have a question, but the students does the work, as they are finding research for their research papers and they have to read the textbook themselves.