Final Reflection

As far as my personal theory or model of how students learn I said at the beginning of the class I firmly believe in repetition, collaboration and adapting lessons to meet the different learning styles. I feel this class helped strengthen the methods and strategies that I use to meet the needs of all my students. It also helped me discover new methods, and definitely new technologies that will help me meet all students’ needs.  Reading and reflecting on the new strategies and how to integrate them with technology really helped me see how the learning theories, strategies and technology all work together so that I could start producing lessons with all three of these components included (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn & Malenoski, 2007). Before, I would think of these three components as separate and producing different results, but now I can see how they all work hand in hand with each other. I also was able to see what a big part the social learning theory has to do with my personal learning theory because I believe collaboration is such a strong influence on how a student learns (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011). 

One of the biggest immediate adjustments I will make to my instructional practice regarding technology integration after completing this course is I will be online looking for more resources to use in my classroom or to help my teaching partners. I am very excited to get more resources for the interactive whiteboard as well.  One of the technology tools that I would like to use with my students is the virtual field trip. My students come from low socioeconomic families and their ability to get out and travel to places very far away is very limited. This makes my job of bringing the outside world in to the classroom that much more important. With a virtual field trip I do not have to worry about permission slips, kids being absent or even finding the money for the field trip. With technology improving more and more each day the field trips that are available online will only get better as well. The other technology tool that I am excited to use is the concept map. The concept map not only goes hand in hand with the virtual field trip, but it also helps get the students exposed to organizing their thinking and learning on the computer. There are so many complex concepts in science and social studies that can easily understood when they are laid out in an organized fashion. For my three major science units of ecosystems, land and water and motion and design I plan on finding virtual field trips that accompany them and concept maps to help the students follow their learning. My repertoire of instructional skills as a result of this course has expanded quite a bit now. More importantly I now know that the instructional strategies that I already feel comfortable with can be integrated with technology easily and efficiently.  I think using the basic instructional strategies that all teachers should know and master is very important, but with today’s changing technological advances it is also very important for teachers to prepare their students for the technology filled world.

            One of my long term goals is I would like to make sure that I use my interactive whiteboard at least once a week to show something to my students or to work with my students. The second part of this goal is to make sure that once a week I allow the students to use the whiteboard on their own. As the months go on in the school year I would like to increase the time I use and the time my students use the whiteboard each week. I plan on taking more time looking up resources that I can use the whiteboard with and fitting them into my lessons. I will add a spot in my lesson plans to fill in an activity each day for using the whiteboard to help achieve my goal.

My other long term goal is finding or even creating my own virtual field trips. I would like to link them all to my science units because I know that I have a big responsibility to bring the outside world in to my classroom for my students. I know that virtual field trips are still pretty new so I am thinking that it would be helpful and even fun if I was to make my own virtual field trips.

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Program eight: Social learning theories [Video webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Retrieved from http://laureate.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=5700267&CPURL=laureate.ecollege.com&Survey=1&47=2594577&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=0&bhcp=1

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom

instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Voice Thread

http://voicethread.com/share/2303214/

Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

After reading the chapter in Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works book I discovered some great examples to use in my science classroom when it comes to grouping, but also found many ways in which, “Cooperative Learning” shares common themes with the social learning theory (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn & Malenoski, 2007).

Dr. Orey discusses the strategy called “Jigsaw” where students are randomly grouped for a cooperative learning experience (Laureate Education, Inc., 2011).  In the chapter on cooperative learning one of the generalizations states, “Organizing groups based on ability levels should be done sparingly” and with the strategy of jigsaw this helps alleviate the ability grouping each time (Pitler et al., 2007).  Another generalization states, “Cooperative learning groups should be rather small in size,” this is important to the social learning theory because with this theory the students each need to have a say and feel like they are involved with creating the artifact (Pitler et al., 2007). When groups get too big there are more opportunities for students’ voices to get lost and students lose the benefit of working with others. One way in which I use cooperative learning and also tap into the social learning theory is with expert groups in my classroom.  We have four kids in each of our six table groups. I call each of the number ones back separately, all the number twos, all the number threes and finally all the number fours. Each number gets taught by me about a certain subject. In this unit I am doing right now it is ecosystems. My number ones come back and learn about pond ecosystems, number twos about river ecosystems, number threes about the steppe ecosystem and number fours become an expert on the Blue Mountain ecosystem. These students then go back and teach the rest of their group members. Finally, as a class we all come together and I randomly pick students to give me an answer that will fill in the table I have up on the wall. I can call on any student and they get points for a right answer to fill in the table so this makes it so everyone at the table is held accountable. This strategy is very useful because all my students are ELL and they really need that practice to just use the English language. It is also beneficial for the students because they get to interact with each other and they can ask their “expert” if they have questions on the topic.           

In order to really take these expert groups and turn them into a real cooperative learning experience I could create a rubric for the students to grade themselves at the end of the unit. The rubric, like it states in Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works, would have to include how the students felt they worked as a team (Pitler et al., 2007). This would rubric would really help keep the students focused on how they were being graded, what was expected of them and how to be a successful member of a team, a very important 21^st century skill.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Program eight: Social learning theories [Video webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Retrieved from http://laureate.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=5700267&CPURL=laureate.ecollege.com&Survey=1&47=2594577&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=0&bhcp=1

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom

instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.