Fitting the Pieces Together: Learning theories & Learning Styles

The literature related to different learning theories and learning styles, I reviewed last few weeks, awakened me to rethink about how I learned? As I mentioned in week one, we (students) were taught by our teachers mostly using conventional methods like ‘chalk and talk’. Even within this chalk and talk method, now I can see our teachers had used various teaching strategies and styles such as spelling bees, debates and artwork competitions. Sometimes we were taken on field trips and another time we were given group works. Now I can see these activities have relationships with some features discussed in learning theories such as constructivism and connectivism.

Actually as a student in primary and secondary classes I did not have any idea about my learning styles or strategies. Though I like or not, I had to follow what my teacher preferred. But after learning about various learning theories and learning styles, now I can say many preferred learning theories and styles are available for learners. Out of the learning theories I read these days I mostly preferred are constructivism and connectivism because both of these theories have features like exploration, knowledge construction and sharing, team work, collaboration and so on. As I involve in curriculum development, I have to think about the infrastructure facilities currently we have in our country. Still we have some problems like band width and availability of the Internet facility every where in the country.
However, computers can be used to enhance our learning process by introducing computer assisted learning (CAL) tools and computer based learning (CBL) tools across the curricula. As offline tools we can integrate these software. Some of these tolls have behaviouristic features and some have constructivist features.

The latest technology available to me in my work place is multimedia computer with the Internet facility. For my day to day to work, I use the Internet for searching information related to my office work such as teacher training and interactive material development. I used ‘cloud computing’ tools such as Google groups, reader, scholar, Facebook, Blogger, TeacherTube, Slideshare and You tube. Most of the application software is available as free and open source software (FOSS) or freeware. FOSS and freeware is used for the teacher training as well as material development. Some of the software, I currently used are OpenOffice, GIMP, Dia, VLC and Hotpotatoes.