Vygotsky's disagreements of Jean Piaget's theories

Vygotsky made his theories around the same time as Jean Piaget who was another theorist who also specialised on cognitive development. Like Piaget, he believed that children are actively involved in constructing their own learning, discovering and developing of new understandings. However, Vygotsky was a social constructivist where was Piaget was a cognitive constructivist, so he placed more emphasis on social contributions to the process of development, whereas Piaget emphasised on self-initiated discovery. A lot of Vygotsky’s theories contradict those of Piaget as he did not believe in the stages and content of development. Another disagreement was on the order of the process. Vygotsky argued that learning is an aspect of developing, so he thought social learning must come before development, whereas Piaget’s notion stated that children’s development must precede their learning.

Why use a Voki?

I decided to use the 'Voki' Web application because I believe that it can be very useful for education. A Voki can help to keep pupils interested and focused as it adds something different and is also interactive, allowing children to have hand on experiences. An app like this is great for teaching younger children, a cartoon character that they can listen to and can personally edit will instantly capture their attention. Apps like these are simple to use and are available to anyone. Trying to learn a lot of information can often be difficult and a child can easily lose interest if the learning style stays the same, for example reading a book or listening to a teacher talk for an hour can often bore a child and it's very unlikely that they will actually learn something. Adding something like a Voki to the content can make a big difference, and will help to improve a child's computing skills at the same time.

Voki

Wordle

Wordle is a useful way of emphasising words and helps to summarise content providing an alternative, more appealing approach to bullet points. In education Wordle can be used by teachers to stress key points to pupils, to quickly recap on lessons and can also promote self reflections, preventing you from going off-track and sticking to main factors.  Pupils can also benefit from using Worlde to make brief points on topics, promoting self reflections which prevent the child losing track and allows them to illustrate information as a picture.

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Memory

Memory is our ability to store, retain and to be able to recall information in our brain. Just by hearing or reading information it doesn’t mean that you’re learning, you have to be able to remember the information in order to have knowledge of it. Chunking is a strategy used to help us remember things in groups. This can be very useful and effective but it also has it’s negatives. For example, chunking is often used to learn the alphabet but by only remembering it in a certain order, it makes it difficult to remember certain parts of it without going through the whole pattern e.g we all know the alphabet, but would all struggle to do it backwards because we have all learnt it using the chunking technique.

Systematic procedures also help to improve memory. An example of this would be using a sentence to help spell a word, such as Billy Eats Cakes And Uses Six Eggs to spell the word because. This method is also often used to remember patterns, such as the colours of the rainbow and the planets of the universe.  The only negative of this method is that people rely on it, and are unable to remember the pattern without using this technique.

Creative Development

Creative development is created through aspects such as responding to experiences, expressing and communicating ideas, developing imagination and exploring media and materials. Children benefit from free play and unstructured art activities, but left entirely to their own devices children’s play and artwork can become routine and repetitive. To solve this problem children need stimulation and creative problems to solve. Adults can help children to develop their creative skills through play by providing activities and creative problems to solve, creating stimulation.

'Creativity emerges as children become absorbed in action and explorations of their own ideas, expressing them through movement, making and transforming things using media and materials.' (Early Years Matters, 2007). An example of an activity that is used to help creative development would be allowing children to use clay to make their own model of an object. By letting the children make their own individual model, they develop physical manipulation and physical actions by squeezing, moulding and cutting the clay. They also share skills and knowledge with each other which helps them learn and improve on their problem solving. This activity helps the children learn because they enjoy the sensory qualities and they are able to have fun and use their own creative ideas whilst making the models. 

Reference;

http://wales.gov.uk/topics/educationandskills/earlyyearshome/foundation-phase/?lang=en

My Education Journey

I started off at Gowerton infants school as it was in my local area. I then moved on to Gowerton primary, which was when I started to play sports such as foootball and rugby. After this I went on to Gowerton Comprehensive where I sat my GCSE's and got the qualifications to go on to sixth form at the school. I then had the choice of what A levels to take and by passing these courses after two years I was able to join Swansea University.