GAME plan:

Goals to strengthen confidence

• In the area of promoting and modeling citizenship and responsibility I would like strengthen my skills in meeting the needs of all learners in the classroom. More specifically, I would like to increase my confidence in providing students with equal opportunities to use digital tools and resources.
  
• The second area I would like to strengthen my skills in the classroom deals with collaborating with parents, peers, and students to use the digital tools and resources to support student thinking and learning.

Actions to achieve those goals

1. Locate a variety of resources: examples include articles, conferences, search engines, information technology resources in the building.
2. Ask parents to help and become educated on the resources available
3. Provide students with opportunities to share resources they have found.
4. Ask other teachers for help.
5. Search, search, search

Monitoring Progress

• Keep a journal of the resources found whether through searches, colleagues, parents, or students
• Ask for student and parent input

Evaluate and Extend your learning

• Reflections of the technologies used and how effective they were
• Parent and student input
• Attend workshops that introduce and teach about new resources
• Stay connected with teachers that use technology and share resources
  

Bottom of the 5th - Final Blog Posting for Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology

I would have to say that the biggest adjustment I would make to my teachings and with integrating technology into my lessons is to not be afraid to explore more and to make use of the technology that is out there. Because of this class and the others I have taken through Walden, I have become much more familiar with how to incorporate technology into my lessons. Before, I felt very limited in my knowledge, capability, and awareness of how to do this on a regular basis with success. I felt that if I had my students typing out papers and completing some research using the web, I felt that I was doing an adequate job. With blogging, wikis, voice threads, photo shows, and the other various projects I have worked on over the span of seven classes, I feel that my skills on using technology with my students has greatly improved. I have also learned so much from the other students, my fellow educators, in class and through collaborating on blogs.

I really enjoyed blogging and the voice thread activities that I have completed during this class. I enjoyed seeing other voice threads that accompanied pictures and feel that this concept can be used to complete projects in social studies and science, making for some awesome artifacts.

My plan for the future is: 1) not to be afraid to explore and "get my hands dirty" with technology, realizing that having kids type papers on the computer is not incoporating technology into my lessons; and 2) to seek out other teachers, educational blogs, and educational journals for ideas and take the time to become familiar with the ideas expressed by these sources. To do this, I plan on to at least incoporate a new idea with each month. As I do this, I hope to follow through with this more frequently.

Top of the 5th: My First Voice Thread

Here is the link to my voice thread. It describes a common problem among teachers with limited access to inferior technology that does not satisfy the needs of teachers and students. Please take the time to listen and make a comment. Thanks!

http://voicethread.com/share/1046730

Bottom of the 4th - Cooperative Learning

I do not know of a teaching strategy that would better relate and be an example of the social learning theory in practice other than cooperative learning. In this week's resources, Dr. Orey (2009) describes social learning theories as students when they are actively taking part in assembling and creating artifacts that demonstrate what they are learning while engaging in educational dialogue. Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, and Malenoski (2007) say that cooperative learning is when students are interacting with one another for learning purposes and for forming new understandings. Through cooperation and collaboration, students can learn from one another, forming new understandings that by themselves, would not occur.



One thing that the Internet and technology does well is allow for collaboration and socialization. Because of this, cooperative learning can take on a new form other than just working together in the classroom. With proper planning by groups, multimedia projects can be produced as a culminating artifact. The Web not only allows for collaboration among classmates, but it also allows for cooperative learning to occur between students of classrooms from different parts of the world. Through sites such as ePALS, Keypals Club International, and Intercultural E-Mail Classroom Connections, students from different cultures can learn with one another and from one another. There are endless possibilities when it comes to web quests and web site designs for collaboration, as well as multi-player simulation games. Wikis and blogs, at this point, seem to be common practice for cooperative learning and collaborating among classmates.



Again, I can not think of a better way to open up doors to working with other people near and very far, as far as a person can imagine. Even when thinking about the classes that I am taking along with many other students across the globe, Walden University is an example of social learning theories and cooperative learning. The Web must be a tool that is used for these purposes.



References:

Laureate Education. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning, theory, instruction, and technology. [DVD]. Baltimore: Author.

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

Top of the 4th - Constructionism in the Classroom

In this week's video, Dr. Orey discusses contructivism and constructionism. Both theories deal with how the brain builds its own understanding of the world around it, how it takes in new information, compares the new with the old, and thus constructs understanding or schema. Constructionism takes the building process one step further. Not only do learners take in information and formulate an understanding of their own, but learners can take the construction of understanding even further by actually applying what they know in creating an artifact that exemplifies this understanding of a concept. When students are fully engaged in the learning process, they are able to construct a very strong understanding of what it is that needs to be learned and fully demonstrating the cognitive process (Laureate, 2009).

I feel that anytime students can take concepts and apply them to real life situations, and in the process, create an artifact that symbolizes the learning that has taken place, the concepts become cemented in the long term memory. The concepts become truly meaningful to the learners. Most elementary students that I know love to create things in class. To be able to create artifacts that test out their own thoughts and hypotheses is a wonderful learning activity, fully engaging their minds in hands-on activities. You can witness first-hand learning taking place as you move around the classroom, listening to the educational on-task discussion of what it is that they are working on. Working in teams and collaborating on tasks, seeing light bulbs turning on and shining bright is what teaching is all about. In this week's text, Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, and Malenoski describe a number of activities involving technology and the constructing of understanding through engaging hands-on and minds-on activities. Through using problem based learning activities, spread sheet software can be used to simulate real-world situations and apply concepts about savings and investment that are being taught in class to test out hypotheses. In other activities, data collection tools were used to collect and analyze data gathered in science classes. Finally, gaming software and web resources allow students to be leaders of their own countries and make extremely important and influential decisions regarding their countries' place in the virtual world. The authors state, "Web resources and gaming software...allowing students to use background knowledge, make decisions, and see the outcome of their hypotheses, often in virtual situations...provides incredibly engaging learning environments, resulting in increased motivation and retention in learning" (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, p.212, 2007).

I believe that these and other activities where students are actively applying what they have learned into making decisions, collaborating with other classmates, and creating situations where they can see their ideas come to life is fully engaging and reflects what Dr. Orey describes as constructivism and constructionism.





Resources:

Laureate Education. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning, theory, instruction, and technology. [DVD]. Baltimore: Author.

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

Bottom of the 3rd - Cognitive Theories of Learning

It seems to make sense to me that the more pathways that can be created to access information learned, the more this information cements itself in long-term memory. The more senses individuals use to take in information, the greater the chances are that the information will remain, waiting for it to be retrieved at a later time. Any time learners take new information, and manipulate it in a way that makes sense to them, they attach more meaning. Making meaningful connections creates more pathways and triggers that will link back to specific details(Laureate, 2007).

The use of advance organizers, questioning, and cues before a given lesson will open doors to what is about to be learned, creating a reason and interest to continue on with a lesson (Pittler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, p.73, 2007). By using such technologies as spread sheet and concept mapping software, students are able to use information learned to either represent data in various ways and create mental maps connecting one idea to another, heightening the level of understanding. Taking students on a virtual field trip (Laureate, 2007) is one of the most interesting ways to step out of the classroom, allowing students to "travel" any where in the world to see real-world applications of what is being learned in class. For example, in my fifth grade social studies class, it is possible to take students to the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where students can see exhibits and presentations about the details of the Constitution as we study it from our room. It is also possible to take students to a museum to see artifacts from ancient civilizations, all from their seats in class. This may be a way to create episodes, where information is linked to occurrences and emotion, thus placing information into one's episodic memory.

When students take notes in class and are asked to summarize what they have learned, they must actively think about what is being told to them, copy down what is to them the most important details, and construct their notes and summarizing in their own words. Because of this, there has to be some type of in depth thought going on as students complete this task. This follows along with cognitive theories, where learning is seen as information enters the brain, is organized, stored, and is kept there until retrieved when needed (Lever-Duffy & McDonald, p.16, 2008).

Wikis amd blogs are great ways to use technology to help take and synthesize notes from class and also allowing collaboration between students to take place. When students learn from other students, there is more chances for deeper understanding to occur. If class notes are combined with related images in a power point presentation, more cognitive thought has gone into understanding what the notes explain. More meaning is attached to the notes when linked with images creating more pathways to the information for recall later (Pittler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, p.131 and p.135, 2007).

References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning, theory, instruction, and technology. [DVD]. Baltimore: Author.

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.

Top of the 3rd - Behaviorism in the Classroom

In my mind, the learning theory of behaviorism is one of the most common used theories in a classroom. It may even be one of the most common learning theories that individuals develop understanding of basic behaviors. Lever-Duffy and McDonald (2008) state that with positive behavior comes some form of reward. With negative behavior comes some form of punishment or no recognition at all (p.15). During this process, also referred to as operant conditioning, there is no real thought taking place, the brain making decisions based on the thought that it wants to receive that reward. It does not want to receive a negative response or no response at all. Most simple behavioral issues in the classroom are probably handled in this manner, with positive behavior comes a reward in the form as something tangible or something as simple as a pleasing look on a teacher's face. With negative behavior comes a response in the form of exclusion from activities, or something as simple as an unpleasing look on a teacher's face. Sometimes, the look alone can cause students to understand quite quickly that what he or she did should not be repeated. Believe me, I have experienced some of the most intimidating looks from teachers.

For teachers, if we can get desired behaviors from our students based on this theory, I feel that it is possible for students to understand that with more effort may come higher levels of achievement. If this connection can be made, many students may become more successful in school and later in life. According to authors Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, and Malenoski (2007), students may be able to make the connection between effort and achievement through charting their level of effort given during activities and their level of achievement. Once students realize that their level of achievement is affected by how much effort given, it could condition the students to put forth a more consistently higher level of effort.

Along that line of thought, I believe that the completion of homework is part of a student's effort to succeed. This being said, however, homework that is assigned should be meaningful practice of skills taught in school. Assignments referred to as "drill and kill" should be avoided. These type of assignments may cause students to lose interest in what is being taught. Meaningful practice of skills in real life situations is what should be assigned. Teachers should also give immediate feedback, allowing very little room for students to practice skills in an incorrect manner.

Again, if teachers can have their students understand that with more effort may come higher desired achievement, students may become conditioned to put forth more effort on a consistent basis, thus making use of the behaviorist theory of learning.

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.