Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Reflection 6711:Personal Theory of Learning

I’m a firm believer that a learner is active in the learning process and in today’s classroom I believe implementing technology where ever we can enhances this process. Now the trick is to modify my learning theory to best suit all of my students.

Reflecting on this course, I’ve learned the importance of creating an artifact, the difference between short terms a long-term memory. How the brain actually functions. We’ve analyzed the difference in learning strategies. There have been many useful suggestions by Dr. Orey, but the one that sticks out the most for me, is when he was explaining how he observed a course where the teacher said, do not touch the starboard and proceed to put up a PowerPoint presentation and read word for word. He said…don’t do it. If you are doing this please stop. Interestingly enough, I had observation last week. I imagined Dr. Orey sitting right next to the principal and I wanted to “dazzle” both of them with my new knowledge. I have not gotten feedback yet, but will check back when I do.

Sitting in a quite classroom with great ideas for voice threads, you’d never imagine that I was the teacher and not the student. Well technically speaking I was a student learning something new. Voice threading in a technology that I have already inserted into a lesson plan.

The other technology of conceptual mapping is a great way to organize ideas, not only for the students but also for me. I used this strategy while creating a new lesson plan. The nodes allowed me to brainstorm and to try and foresee any obstacles in a lesson plan.

My goal as a middle school technology teacher is to create a comfort level in my students to learn a new technology and to use it in the future.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Connectivism & Social Learning Practice

My interpretation of Dr. Orey’s definition of Social constructivism is that the students are engaged in a project that allows them to converse with classmates. As Dr. Orey suggests cooperative learning is a prime example of social learning. This allows the students to build something or an artifact and to also engage in conversation. Both of these steps are geared towards keeping the information in long-term memory.

Though most of my class work is built around a cooperative learning style, with the new applications I’ve learned in the last couple of weeks, I can bring the student, learning and technology gap even closer together to create a more meaningful experience for my students.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Voice Thread Assignment

http://www.voicethread.com/share/888674/

This is my biggest problem:

Hello All,
The above mentioned voice thread link consists of a view of my classroom. to recap my comment after I took the video explaining my biggest issue is trying to keep my eight graders quiet in a lab that is very big. If I could polish my classroom management skills this would be the first area.

Happy Threading!