Reflecting on my Personal Theory of Learning

As I reflect on my personal theory of learning, mentioned in week 1, I've come to one new conclusion. I understand the importance of students working together to construct a product as evidence of their learning. I have been exposed to lots of new technology that I plan to integrate into my classroom.

I plan to increase the amount of technology I use in the classroom. I want to be more of a facilitator of learning as students are using the technology and constructing new things as evidence of their learning. I really enjoyed learning about Voice Threads and plan to use them often in my classroom.

One of my long term goals is to incorporate the use of Voice Threads into a least two lessons this upcoming school year. I think these are powerful tools that will really engage my students and allow them to collaborate with others while producing evidence of their learning. My second goal will be to incorporate a blog into my classroom. This is something I would like to begin early in the school year. Students can respond to questions, share their questions or comments and learn from others while using this blog. I hope they will continue to use it long after the school year is over.

Overall I really enjoyed this course and have learned a lot about using technology in the classroom.

Voice Thread

Here is a link to my voice thread for this weeks assignment:


http://voicethread.com/#u968788.b1197733

Social Learning Theory

The power of students working together can be great! Instead of just constructing something on their own, the social learning theory suggest that students should collaborate with others while doing this construction. This week I learned about a number of strategies to assist in this process that can be used with technology.

The Voice Thread is an excellent tool that allows students to make a product similar to a powerpoint. Some of the differences however include that students can add their own voice comments to uploaded pictures and receive comments from other students all over the world. This seems like not only an excellent tool to assess students or construct things, but also to have them interact with their classmates, other students in their school and students across the world.

Jigsaw is another strategy that stuck out from this week's resources. I believe that when a person is required to teach something, they are more likely to learn more about the subject! Jigsaw requires students to work with a small group collaborating and collecting information about a particular subject. Students then move to a second group where they teach the group about their topic. This strategy could also be used with technology as students could conduct research on the internet, construct a powerpoint show to present their information, or even compile pictures about a particular subject!