Week 4 reflection

This week's readings were a bit challenging in that I was getting easily confused between operant and classical, when it came down to the letters. I am okay with explaining it when it comes to the behavior but then when I have to put it into the contact of letter symbols I found that I was sEcond guessing myself and wondering if I really knew at the information or not. I guess it just takes practice. I am thinking about my learning environment and since I am not a teacher, and have no desire to be such either, I think I will have to make something up instead of having the ability to use an example from my own experience. Or I could choose to use something from my steamfitting days. That work was all practical application but you had to know it, and know it properly. One mistake could cost someone their life. And I went through an apprenticeship with my union so maybe I will use something surrounding that form of education. I would like to use something related to disaster education but I don't think I'm confident enough in my knowledge abilities in that area to make any scenarios up. We'll see. I'm not going to see out about it, which I felt like the whole class was doing in class Monday night. I was getting more confused with each question! I understand the assignment but with others throwing out so many questions I was again, second guessing myself and wondering why I didn't have those questions as well. I think perhaps the questions were causing me to think I hast put enough thought into the project, but alas, I should have trusted my gut because I was correct, everyone else was just confused! I hope no one is reading this but you!!

So let's see...what surprised me this week? I guess it was my inability to fully grasp the differences between operant and classical as mentioned above. I really liked the in-class activity though, that helped a great deal. It also showed me what I didn't know though too so that was a bonus. Admittedly I struggles with the whole negative reinforcement vs punishment issue. Still not sure if I have it down yet but I will keep working on it.

621 week 3 reflection

I almost forgot to post this week! Reflecting on this week's class I would have to say that nothing really surprised me but it was fun to do the sundae-making exercise and to see how other people came up with ideas that would help others learn. It's always so interesting to me to see groupwork in action and to hear the ideas that others have with respect to learning. While all of our ideas shared similarities, they were also all quite different in their own way which tells me that we all have preferences for how we learn best too, not just how we expect to teach differently. The definitions were interesting too because I know how I think of certain terms, based on what I have learned and it was good to learn how others view the same terms. I know there are textbook definitions of these terms but it's all in how people interpret what they hear and learn so it was interesting to see that in action. The readings for last week were also interesting. My BA is in psychology so I got a lot of that information during my undergrad work. This was like a refresher for me in a sense. I had to take Brain and Behavior, and a Learning class as well while at Le Moyne so I know a bit about what the chapter was touching on. I guess I did retain something from my undergrad because I remembered most of what the book said! Who'd have thought?? I guess I don't have much else to say on this week's class. It went by so quickly and while I feel like we covered alot of information, it was more or less a recap. Until next week...