Blog post #5

Last week was round two of webinar class! We used Zoom this week and in all honesty I felt like it was about the same as the bluejeans app that we used the first week. Nothing was majorly different except for perhaps the polling options. I know something I disliked though was I had switched screens for a moment and it brought me back to the webinar automatically (wasn't a fan).
I completely understand why webinars are important for the working environment in a classroom. If someone is sick, if there is information that was brought up outside of class time, or even if there are people from different states wanting to join the class.... it is an awesome tool to be used.
The readings for this week were about youth (one of my favorite topics!) The chapters were about infants, the mind and brain, types of learning, and motivation to learn. All of this was super interesting especially coming from a non-educational background. I remember in undergrad my education friends would be talking about the developing brain constantly and I just nodded and pretended to understand what they were talking about, however now it is a little more clear. One of the most interesting quotes from the reading was from the chapter on infants: "Children are seen as learners who assemble and organize material. As such, cognitive development involves the acquisition of organized knowledge structures including, for example, biological concepts, early number sense, and early understanding of basic physics. In addition, cognitive development involves the gradual acquisition of strategies for remembering, understanding, and solving problems." This quote really makes you think as an adult at what you are teaching your kids and the kiddos coming into your space as a professional. All children learn at different rates but I think we forget that infants brains are like sponges with everything we do and say being absorbed by them. Its so crazy to think about! 

Learning about types of learning is always an interesting topic to replay on. Visual, hearing, and feeling are the top three normally that we talk about in a classroom setting and this chapter really does relay the three of these in different ways. I think that children have such a difficult time somethings relaying how they learn because in a classroom setting they are only taught in one specific way. Another interesting quote from the Types of Learning chapter is as follows: "The gradual learning and unlearning of habits follows principles of conditioning, a nonconscious form of learning in which one automatically adjusts one’s decisions and behaviors when particular and familiar contextual cues or triggers are present." I was just talking with someone the other day about habit forming and how children get stuck in bad habits (such as have a speech disability) and not getting the help that they need.