Reflection

Reflection

After completing this course, it has shown me a couple of things. First, it has shown me that many of the things that we do in my classroom are in line with the learning theories we covered in the past seven weeks. It has also shown me many new tools, as well as ways to utilize these tools that I had not done in the past.
As far as being in line with the learning theories we studied, some of the lessons that I use, like the Chicago web quest, fit the constructionist learning theory in which the students learn by building their own artifacts and presenting them to the group. We follow some aspects of the behaviorist learning theory by rewarding the students for successful completion of repetitive skills practice programs, like Education City and Key Skills.
What I have really become more aware of is evaluating the technology as an instructional tool or a learning tool. I recently attended the Illinois Computing Educators conference in St Charles Illinois. I sought out sessions in which technology was used as a learning tool as opposed to an instructional tool and picked up some great ideas for future projects. A couple of the ideas are to have students use screen casting to teach each other shortcuts or techniques they use while working with the programs on our server. The students can also develop pod casts to share some of the knowledge they have gained studying various theme units for the following year’s class to use as a resource. I also would like to incorporate student produced video in a similar manner. Having them develop video versions of stories they are reading to share with their class and classes that follow. These are a few of goals that I would like to attain with my students in the next couple of years. Not only will the students develop technology skills but by reviewing, revising and redoing the content they have learned to present it to others in one of these multimedia formats, they will be building lasting connections to the content in their minds.

Voice Thread

http://voicethread.com/share/897266/

Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

This week we looked at Cooperative Learning as an instructional strategy for social learning. I think it works well for multimedia projects such as video where smaller groups can work on the various parts of the project and then bring it all together in much less time than would be possible for individual students. The main thing you have to be careful with for this type of activity is to clearly define the roles of each group and each student within the group so that everyone is contributing. We need to “help students understand what is expected of them and how their participation will be evaluated.” (Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K., 2007, p.141)
Cooperative Learning also works well for Web Quests, because the group members can research parts on their own and then bring them back to share with the other members of the group. Taking this to the next step with technology would be having the students share their findings with the other groups using a blogs, wikis or even a chat room. That way they could post the links where they found their information with the others so they would have access to the information for themselves.




Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.