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.