1. There are three different ways to pay attention: selective (focusing on one thing), divided (dividing your attention into several things), and saccadic eye movements (moving our eyes to follow what we are looking at). Consciousness is related to attention because sometimes we are not giving our full attention to a task we are doing, but we are still consciously processing what we are doing.
2. It is difficult to learn something new if I have to focus my attention on several different things at one time. When we focus our attention on something, we can use top-down or bottom-up processing.
3. I am still having a difficult time with the last chapter and I think that is carrying over to this chapter. I understand this chapter much better, but to compare it to the last was difficult. I would like to know more about consciousness.
4. Having this information on attention has helped me realize how hard it is for students to give their attention to more than one thing at a time when they are trying to learn. I always wondered why some teachers were so stern about students being quiet and having their eyes on them when they were talking, but now I know that it truly does help them focus on the discussion at hand.
5. The story about the air traffic controller who was dividing his attention too many ways causing the planes to crash really helped me to understand divided attention. I also enjoyed how the author put in current information about cell phone users and driving.
6. It is important to educators so we can find out how to really help students focus in on what we are trying to teach them. It also helps with testing, especially the part about the present/absent features. I know that if I give my students a test and I ask them to tell me which one is not part of the group, that the difficulty of the question is harder.
7. I think this would help with all of my students, but especially for my students that have difficulty focusing on the lesson. I need to make sure I can figure out all the other things that student is giving their attention to and remove it during the lesson times. (Sounds like a duh statement haha).
8. Not really sure what to say to this question?
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Ch. 2
1. I believe that this reading was about the different ways we visually recognize objects. The chapter also went into the topics of face recognition and how interesting it is that we can recognize peoples faces even if they are contoured or partially turned. Also, the topic of speech perception is discussed and that the general mechanism approach views speech sounds as a learned ability.
2. I'm starting to see that cognition is extremely complex and that theories are always changing as more research is completed.
3. All the different theories confuse me, but I think it is more because I have a difficult time comprehending while I read. I learn much better by discussions. It is not until after I read a few people's posts that I really feel like I understand what I read. I still feel like I am confusing the top-down and bottom-up processes.
4. It has really helped me to think about how my students learn. I used to think that my students were just reading too fast and making up words when the read aloud to me, but now I realize that they are just overusing the top-down processing. It also interests me to see how much context helps in the learning process.
5. All the examples from the research really made a believer out of me. Especially the face recognition credit card study. I could not believe how many cashiers did not notice that the person giving them the card and the person in the picture were completely different people.
6. I can predict that my students are going to have a difficult time learning if I am only teaching them by standing at the board and lecturing or by just having visuals and not connecting them to the lecture. I now also know that when I teach 2D shapes, it is important that I use good features for them because if I just say to draw a 4 sided and 4 cornered shape, they could draw several different shapes. I need to teach them the specific features that show how each shape is different.
7. I sort of answered this above, but I think this benefits all students.
8. I think using many different ways to teach a topic will help the students learn it better, but being careful not to overwhelm them. Also, having good features the first time and being able to create a context for what they are learning will show improvements faster.
2. I'm starting to see that cognition is extremely complex and that theories are always changing as more research is completed.
3. All the different theories confuse me, but I think it is more because I have a difficult time comprehending while I read. I learn much better by discussions. It is not until after I read a few people's posts that I really feel like I understand what I read. I still feel like I am confusing the top-down and bottom-up processes.
4. It has really helped me to think about how my students learn. I used to think that my students were just reading too fast and making up words when the read aloud to me, but now I realize that they are just overusing the top-down processing. It also interests me to see how much context helps in the learning process.
5. All the examples from the research really made a believer out of me. Especially the face recognition credit card study. I could not believe how many cashiers did not notice that the person giving them the card and the person in the picture were completely different people.
6. I can predict that my students are going to have a difficult time learning if I am only teaching them by standing at the board and lecturing or by just having visuals and not connecting them to the lecture. I now also know that when I teach 2D shapes, it is important that I use good features for them because if I just say to draw a 4 sided and 4 cornered shape, they could draw several different shapes. I need to teach them the specific features that show how each shape is different.
7. I sort of answered this above, but I think this benefits all students.
8. I think using many different ways to teach a topic will help the students learn it better, but being careful not to overwhelm them. Also, having good features the first time and being able to create a context for what they are learning will show improvements faster.
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