In my first week of the course, I had to come up with a “personal theory of learning.” I stated that I like to try and have the learner be as active in the learning process as possible and that I believed strongly in cooperative learning. I felt like my personal theory fell mostly into the social learning theories, although I thought that other theories were present as well. I also stated that I liked to vary the strategies that I use so that the classroom stays fresh and does not get dull.
I feel that for the most part, my theory of learning has stayed the same. Still, the more I learned about all of the theories of learning that we looked at, the more I realized that that many of them are more present in my classroom than I thought. This course made me understand that I can be incorporating several theories at once in my classroom and that we can rarely be defined by just one at any time. It also showed me that technology advancements have made incorporating more theories into instruction more possible than ever before.
As a result of learning in this course, I will make a couple of immediate adjustments to my instructional practice regarding technology integration. First, I will make sure that I am using technology more as a learning tool instead of an instructional tool. For technology to be used as a learning tool, the students must be using it and be active with it and if they are not then it is just an instructional tool. I want to make sure that anything we are using has the students fully involved. I also want to move to using a majority of my graphic organizers on the computer. I feel this makes the use of organizers much more easy and capable of doing more.
Two technology tools that I would like to use more with my students from this course are concept mapping and VoiceThread. I want to use concept mapping more because it opens up webbing as a graphic organizer to new possibilities. The students can go to an online site and collaborate with each other no matter where they are. They can also use many things within these programs to make graphic organizers that could never be made on a sheet of paper. With VoiceThread, the students have an opportunity to come up with a presentation or a problem and post it to the web. They can comment on what each other are doing and then use it to strengthen the work they are doing in the classroom. It is a great tool that has a lot of potential that I have just began to scratch the surface of.
This course has expanded my repertoire of instructional skills greatly. I now have a better understanding of the different theories of learning and how they affect the student and how to best put them into practice. I now also understand more the different instructional strategies that can be used in the classroom, how technology can enhance them, and how they relate to learning theory. I feel more confident than ever as a teacher now because of this course because I feel better armed to provide my students with the best learning experience I can.
With this course, I have two long-term goal changes I would like to make with my instructional practice regarding technology integration. The first is something I mentioned earlier, which is to make sure that technology and instruction is being used primarily as a learning tool. To do this, I am going to make sure that anytime I am planning out a lesson that I am making sure that the student is going to be active in whatever we are doing. I have added a section to my personal daily notes for listing what I did that was active and not active for the learner. Using this to reflect on will help to make sure that I do not make the same mistakes again and that I do things that will be more active and learning focused for the student.
The other goal that I have is to use technology to collaborate with other teacher’s classes. I plan on doing this by communicating with my colleagues more to design activities that the students can do to allow them to work with other classes in the same and different subjects. I believe the key to this is the collaboration between me and other teachers and if I can get this down then the students will fall into it naturally. I believe that the students would enjoy this a lot and they would learn more from it by stretching what we are learning across to other classrooms.
This course has been benefited me more than I could ever realize. My understanding of my students and how they learn is on a much higher level than ever before. Not only do I understand my students more now, but I also understand how technology has its place in it all more than before. I now feel more confident moving forward with my students and I can not wait to see what the next course brings to the table to make me even more confident in my abilities as a teacher in the classroom.
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