Reflection on Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology

This week, my cohorts and I are in a process of reflection. We are looking at everything that we have learned in our Educ 5711 class, and how we will integrate technology into our instruction.

In the beginning of the course, my "Personal Theory of Learning" was a combination of constructivist and cognitivist theory, as I believed that students needed to create their own meanings for things to truly acquire knowledge. This has not completely changed, but I would say that I definitely have come to believe that social construcionist theory has become part of my personal theory. There is overwhelming evidence to support use of cooperative learning in combination with constructionist techniques to support learning.

We have learned a great deal about different tools of technology that we can use with our students that will impact their learning, and while I would love to be able to integrate them all, I am limited by having only one computer in my classroom, and restrictions that our district has on use of sites like youtube.com, or facebook.com. Two technologies that I can easily integrate into my teaching, and I have begun the approval process for, are Webspiration and VoiceThread. Webspiration will be used for in-class mind mapping and creation of concept maps. This will help students better understand how things relate ot one another, and organize their notes, as well. VoiceThread will be used for video-blogging assignments. We will complete several assignments in Spanish, to give students practice responding to spoken Spanish, and allow them to access these outside of class, to take their language learning into their homes and share with their parents what we are learning in class.

Two long-term changes that I would like to make to my instructional practice are that I would like to implement the ongoing creation of a class wiki, and I would like for students to post video podcasts of their projects and presentations for parents to view. To implement the class wiki, I will have to decide exactly what I want the students to put into it, and develop an assignment sheet for that. I would need to schedule time periodically in the computer lab for them to complete these assignments. We would need to spend at least one day every two weeks in the computer lab, which would take a great deal of time away from our in-class language instruction, so I would have to make sure that the assignments continued to strongly reinforce their language acquisition. For the video podcasting, I would need parent permission, which I am in the process of obtaining, and a webcam, which I have purchased and am waiting for installation by the district. I will need to be sure to record the project presentations, and upload them to our site, or have students upload them.

This class has definitely increased my awareness of available technology tools, and my teaching has already transformed. I can't just present information on the SMARTboard anymore without feeling as if I am doing a disservice to my students. In just the first week, they are up, illustrating vocabulary on it, and are asking everyday when the video blog project will begin! They want to do a project! I'm so excited about it!

Link to my VoiceThread post

Here is the link to my VoiceThread: I need some input on motivating students!

http://voicethread.com/share/574572/