Week 8: Reflection

My personal theory of learning has not changed throughout this class. I still believe that students are very multi-sensory learners and I also believe that not every student has a mathematical-logical way of thinking. I still plan on integrating the technology to meet the needs of my students who are multi-sensory learners. My goal is to have all of my students come out of the classroom and understand the material being taught.


The immediate adjustment that I will be making regarding technology integration is to not use the PowerPoint and Smart Board as a “glorified overhead.” I seem to use it more as a teaching tool than a learning tool and that is something that I need to adjust within my own teaching practice. Two technology tools that I plan on using are VoiceThread in order to have the students make up units and projects. The other is the blog. I want to use the blog in order to have the students keep an open line of communication with each other. I like both of the tools because you can use cooperative learning activities with both. It will make my classroom more learner-centered than teacher-centered.

Two goals that I want to make in my classroom are to move away from the teacher-centered presentations and to integrate more technology into my classroom. For moving away from teacher centered presentations, I plan on using technology for my students. I want them to create the presentations and then discuss them with the other students. I plan on integrating more technology into the classroom by using more of the Smart Board and creating more lessons. I also plan on implementing the blog in each of my classes. This class has taught me a lot about technology and its uses. I am very glad that we had the opportunity to take this class.

Constructivism and Social Learning

This week's learning resources involved social learning theories. I really found it interesting to go through all of the websites provided for social learning. In my classroom, I use blogging as a social learning tool for my students. In this they can communicate with each other about ideas in class as well as grade each other's work. It is important to promote working in groups because chances are when the students are out of school, they will most likely have a job in which they will have to interact with people everyday. By learning how to cooperatively work in groups, we are teaching the students life skills which is also very important. The Voice Thread was another great way of showing the students a problem. You could put them into groups and then have them come up with solutions to the problem at hand. Social learning says that students learn from experiences and through each other and all of these are great ways that students can learn from somone besides watching a teacher in front of them.

VoiceThread

http://voicethread.com/share/654481/

Here is the Voice Thread that I made for my Algebra 2 Academic Students.

Constructivist Learning

As I took a look through the constructivist learning sections in the learning resources this week, it made me sad to see that I am not very constructivist when it comes to my teaching methods. From what I can see, constructivist teachers are all about project based learning, which in my field of math, does not always come easy to make projects. The other problem that I have is the amount of material that I have in the curriculum and the actual amount of days that I see my students do not quite match up. With the push for standardized testing, I teach 2 classes directed toward getting my students to pass the High School Proficiency Assessment. Because of this, I do not have a lot of time for projects nor are these the motivated students who would jump on the opportunity to do a project because that would require them to think outside of the box.

In my Math Lab class, I try to do some projects just to break up the monotany of teaching towards a test. It is not fair to the students to have a second math class and be in a classroom where learning is not fun. I try to make it as fun as I can with group work, review games, and projects (where ever I can fit them).

I have been trying to open up and use more technology to fulfill what I would want to become as a constructivist teacher. I have been using Excel whenever I can with my Algebra 2 class and I also use programs that I find online for the students in my pull-out HSPA review classes for homework so that they aren't just taking home worksheets every night to do. I am excited about trying to become a more constructivist teacher, but I feel as though it will take time for me to get to that point.

Content Mapping

Cognitive Learning

In my eyes, cognitive learning is about enabling people to learn by using their own minds. When the students can use their own abilities in order to problem solve, cognition is then occurring. It really seems to me that cognitive learning is based around teaching “real-life” applications of problems. When I was younger and a high school student I had trouble making connections as to why something was important or why something worked in the way that it did. Because of this, I now make sure to show my students what is connected to what we have learned and how to apply it.


This week’s learning resources connected to cognitive learning in a few different ways. When looking at the concept maps, I was thinking about something that I do in my classroom called KWL charts. They have to make a chart of what they Know, what they Want to learn and at the end what they Learned. Concept mapping could be a way of doing this as well, but just through electronic means. I have it a little tough because there are not many field trips for math fields, but the virtual field trips would definitely be an asset to other fields. It connected to cognitive learning because then instead of just hearing about something, they can then physically see what they are learning about.

Application 2: Behaviorist Theory

Behaviorist theory is something that Lever-Duffy and McDonald (2008) define as, “learning which is viewed as a response to external stimuli.” What this really means is that students learn through stimulus and response. Behaviorists also believe that students learn through rewards and punishments. Because of an action, they are either rewarded or punished and then the behavior is supposed to be corrected or reproduced. In this week’s learning resources, we read about ways to integrate technology into learning. Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, and Malenoski (2007) say that, “Homework and practice give students a chance to review and apply what they have learned.” Through homework and practice, the students can then really begin to understand the content and become more comfortable with the materials.




One way that this week’s learning resources correlate with the principles of the behaviorist learning theory is through tutorial instruction. Dr. Orey (2007) talked about how a quick tutorial online can begin a stimulus response for students to begin lesson work. In Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works, they showed a problem about parabolas that I could use in my classroom in order to show quadratic functions on the computer in Excel. Using this program in class could motivate the students to want to learn about it more because it is using technology as a stimulus to the unit. Using review games such as a PowerPoint are also a form of stimulus along with the rewards from winning the review games.



References:



Lever-Duffy, J. & McDonald, J. (2008). Theoretical Foundations (Laureate Education, Inc., custom ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.



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