Reflection

This course has been a rough one for me. I have been away at my parents for much of the summer and only check my course work two times a week. However, I believe I have managed to take a few important things from this class.
I want to say that I made modifications to my personal learning theory, and I'm sure that I have, but nothing that would directly contradict my first application. I now place a little more value on constructivist learning theory. I want my students to construct their knowledge in my classroom. They can do this through project based learning activities, and through group projects. Things like summarizing/note taking and cooperative learning have influenced how I will plan and manage my lessons. (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, Malenoski, 2007)
As of right now, I have no immediate changes to make. It's summertime and there are no students! Seriously though, I want to build in more group activities for my classes that can handle them. My other classes I want to work with so that we progress towards being able to handle group learning activities. I want to focus instruction based on project completion so that my students can explore and freely construct their own meaning. I plan on switching my lesson plans so that they incorporate more of each of these things.
I suppose the above are both my immediate and my long term goals. Technology in the classroom is an important concept, but its even more important to understand how the technology is affecting students. I think that this is the key to a successful, technologically integrated, classroom.

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

Social Learning theories

The instructional strategies discussed this week were relatively easy to connect to social learning theory. Social learning theory is the belief that students learn by interacting and observing others through a variety of different situations. This can be observed in very young students as they imitate an older sibling or in older students as they observe a behavior or action and attempt to implement it themselves. Our very classrooms are social learning platforms where students observe and learn from their interaction with us.

The learning resources and strategies mentioned this week all came back to the same idea. Students need to interact with each other in order to construct and develop meaning. The different strategies included students developing projects together, or creating voicethreads, or even playing games together through their computers. All of these things promote interaction with course material which is what we should strive for in a strong social learning environment. Student interaction will foster strong development as long as it is focused and on task.

In my classroom sometimes it can be difficult to allow my students to work in groups. It really depends on what the class can handle. I've found that when I can manage to do focused group work in a class my students learn more. For some classes I've had this is simply not an option. Most classes I plan in group instruction and projects. I usually have one or two a year where I simply cannot trust the students with any equipment so they miss out.

My VoiceThread: http://voicethread.com/share/523158/