Final Reflections

As this current course, Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction and Technology, comes to a close, I find myself looking back on how I describe my personal learning theory.  In the first assignment for this course, I described myself as a blending of Cognitive and Social Learning theories.  To an extent, that is still true.  I do believe that U.S. History is best taught through a Social learning style.  By students engaging in conversations and collaboration on historical topics they begin to understand the human aspect of history, which allows them to empathize with the history makers that they study which helps them to understand why events happened the way they did.  I still lean toward the Cognitive learning theory in that I do think the any teaching has a basis of information processing and learning experiences, because, as teachers we impart knowledge to our students and plan learning experiences for them to turn their learning into knowledge that they take with them throughout their lives.  How I have changed a little is that I need to add to my description Constructionism because I think that learning must be built up over a period of time and that students get more out of their learning when they are taking a more active role in how they learn.

With the reflections on my personal learning theory, I began to look at how I actively teach my class.  Being a 13 year veteran teacher, I've gotten very complacent in how I teach and after watching Dr. Orey's video, "Instructional Tool vs. Learning Tool" (Laureate, 2010) I came to realize that I've been using the technology in my class as a fancy form of Teacher centered learning.  This is an immediate change I am going to make this coming school year.  The video was a milestone in making me realize how I've moved away from how I taught in the past and may help to explain why my students are not achieving the learning goals put forth by my school and district.  I've been trying to figure out how to improve my standardized test scores for the last few years, and now I think I know what the problem is, I need to get out of the way.  I need to make my classroom more learner centered and be more an instructional facilitator.  The best way to do this is to use my Promethean Board in a more learner centered fashion.  Instead of just reading Power Point slides to them, I need to use the presentation in a way to get the students talking about the topics and have them come up and use the board instead of it just being me.  I've already started going in to my Power Points and pulling out a lot of the wording and using images to facilitate discussion as well as moving them to Active Inspire Flip Charts and adding interactive quizzes for the students to come up and show their learning.

Long term changes that I would like to make would be to use more virtual field trips.  In the past, we had a Distance Learning Lab where we would take students to in order to do Virtual Field Trips or Distance Learning Events.  Due to hardware and scheduling issues, it was not utilized to its full potential in my classroom.  We now have a DLL (Distance Learning Lab) cart that can be brought to the individual classroom and with my school going off block scheduling (90 minute classes with students being seen every other day) making scheduling easier, I can see how I can more effectively bring in Virtual Field Trips (VFT) and Distance Learning events (DLE)  to my students, and if my Campus Technology Manager and I can figure out how to do them with my Promethean Board and a web cam I may be able to do VFTs and DLE events without the cart, which would further allow me to bring the world to my students.

Another long term change that I want to make to my classes is the use of Voice Thread.  I can see how it would be a benefit to my classes.  I could use it to record lectures, discussions or lessons and post them on my school web site so that students can use them to keep up when they are absent or if they missed something during class that they need to complete their homework.  It would also be of value to my Limited English Proficient (LEP) students who have language barriers that impede their learning.  One of the goals set by my Principal for next year are to improve the standardized testing scores for the LEP students in Social Studies.  By using Voice Thread, they can listen to class discussions over and over again to help them pick up English which would help make them more successful in not just my classroom, but in others.  The only barrier that I can see to this is privacy issues.  I will have to check out how I can use Voice Thread and not not violate the student's privacy.

All in all, in this course I've gotten some wonderful ideas to integrate technology in to my lessons to help my students become more responsible in their learning. 

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2010).   Program #14:Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and                   Technology [DVD]  Instructional Tool vs. Learning Tool.  Baltimore, MD: Author.

Social Learning in Practice - 2

Please check out my voice stream interpretation of the results for 6th grade TAKS Reading and my comments on how this will effect my school next year.

http://voicethread.com/share/2095532/

Social Learning in Practice

This week was an exploration in social learning.  Which to most people would just simply be using collaborative learning techniques.  Most teachers think that just putting students into groups and giving them an assignment to do together is what collaborative learning is all about.  Yet, after reading the article on Cooperative Learning by Palmer, Peters, and Streetman (Palmer, 2003) I can see how it is very different.  I got a real sense of what I've been doing wrong when I tried it after following the Scenario that the authors presented to drive home the lesson.  The section about the benefits of Cooperative Learning really helped convince me to try it again, next school year. 
 
 Another technique presented in our readings came from Chapter 7 of text "Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works" was that of the simulation game.  I often have difficulty with getting students engaged in studying U.S. History, unless I find something that "edutains" them.  One game that my students are showing interest in is a game on the IPod Touch called "Oregon Trail".  It was interesting watching how fascinated they were with the game, and when they finished, they could describe hardships that early pioneers faced when traveling west.  It is something that I will definitely use in the future when I am covering Manifest Destiny and has encouraged me to check out the "Revolution" web simulation that was mentioned in the book (Pitler, 2007) as well as searching for other web based simulations to help my students learn.

The techniques presented in the readings all had social learning frameworks in that the students were all working together to create a new body of understanding and knowledge.  The learning was not just one person having an epiphany and "spreading the word", it was each student contributing to the whole and building a whole new level of learning or creating a new understanding that has influenced by their common experiences (Davis, 2008) as well as their individual differences (Kim, 2001).

Constructivism and Constructionism

For this week we were assigned readings on instructional strategies that support constructivist strategies, a theory of knowledge where the student makes their own meaning, and constructionist strategies which is a theory of learning where students learn best by creating something that they can share with the world (Laureate, 2010).

To me, constructionism is the more powerful of the two, since students must work to create something which is shared with the world and is supported, most effectively through project-based learning and learning by design ( Han & Bhattacharya, 2001), and of these learning strategies, learning by design is the more powerful to me due to the fact that LBD (learning by design) values both the students' result or artifact and the process of how they created that artifact.

LBD is a strategy that, to me, holds a lot of value in the teaching of U.S. History.  Often the course is taught with just "book and worksheet" which to any teen is the most boring way to learn about "a bunch of dead white guys".  If I can use LBD then I think that my course will come alive for them.  Having them research why the Americans won the Revolution and present their findings for the class is much more engaging than answering the questions at the end of the chapter and turning them in.  If I let them present their findings in a way that they chose, now the students can play into their technological strengths and be more engaged in their learning, which in the long run will only benefit them in exploring their world and making meaning of it.

Cognitivism in Practice

For my class, Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction and Technology this week we did a study on the Cognitive Learning Theory and were assigned readings on Cues, Questions and Advanced Organizers and on Summarizing and Note Taking.

How I think the chapter on Cues, Questions and Advanced Organizers demonstrate cognitivism in practice is through the use of concept mapping to facilitate student understanding especially when introducing new concepts (Pitler, 2007).  This chapter gave several clear examples of different uses of software for making concept maps,  and some of the tools that come with them, like Inspiration's Rapid Fire tool which helps with keeping up with the students when they are brainstorming topics like the one demonstrated in the book on the "Civil War".  This gave me the idea to use this with my students during our unit on Reconstruction.  I had already began the unit when I learned about this, but I've been using it with each daily lesson to help the students predict what we would be learning about, and then using their concept maps to reflect back on the lesson the next period to help build enduring knowledge as we move into the next topic of study.  I've already noticed that the students seem to be recalling more information as we begin each topic and are able to apply a previous lesson to their current one to go into more depth and are asking deeper questions of each other and me.

The chapter on Note Taking and Summarizing helps to pull in the Cognitive Learning Theory in that through summarizing the student begins to network the information into long-term memory.  By having students practice summarizing the information, they begin to "chunk" materials into a form that makes it easier for them to understand it, and then if coupled with imaging they can dual code the information for better understanding.  I already use note taking with my students in Cornell Note style, but am seeing that if I can incorporate more graphics and, instead of just having them do notes on paper, have them do their notes in online blogs and wikis student interest will increase and that I may see more deeper levels of questions from them. 

Behaviorism in Practice

After reading in the Howard Pitler book, "Using Techology with Classroom Instruction that Works", about reinforcing effort (chapter 8), I was a little disappointed that the technology they talked about using was simply spreadsheet generated rubrics.  However, I did find Ms. Powell's Effort Rubric very interesting.  I am actually considering using it next year with my eighth graders since often I find myself having to explain to students and parents that if I had seen a little more effort in class, the student would have got a 70 in my class instead of a 68.  (We are discouraged from giving a grade of 69 by our administrators - you either give them a 70 or drop the score to a 68).  I can also see how this can help to make a student more accountable for their grade and give them a sense of how they are responsible for the result - a clear point for the behaviorist theory.

In Chapter 10, "Homework and Practice" I can see how more technology could be implemented.  A teacher can always assign creating a presentation about a book the students are reading, which generates more student interest, than using the traditional book report, that most students find boring and uninspired.  A student could use wikis to post their summaries or character analysis and have other students rate how they did.  Again, this would help students to feel that their learning has a reward, which would make them more apt to complete assignments and more willing to learn new technologies to further that feeling.

I think being able to use technology to complete homework would also appeal to a student who frequently does not complete or turn it in.  By using technology, the student will be more willing to "show off" for the teacher, and if the are turning it in on line or posting where other students can see what they have done, the student who wasn't turning in work, now has a new avenue to show their knowledge and become "famous".  This ties in to the use of contracts to extinguish undesirable behavior, in this case - not turning in work, a classic example of behaviorism.

Clearly, behaviorism still has a place in the classroom today, and just because we are becoming more technology literate it does not mean we should forget early research and practices.  We just need to adapt them to work with technology and our changing classrooms.

Workman Junior High Technology Podcast

In an attempt to analyze how much technology my students have access to at home and school, we took a survey on Surveymonkey.com and then conducted technology interviews.  I then created a podcast of the results.  Have a listen:


http://mindymo4567.podbean.com/


Hope you enjoy!