Reflective Essay

In a reflective essay to post on your blog, respond to the following:

• Describe the most striking revelation you had about the teaching of new literacy skills to your students as a result of this course.

I think the thing that struck me the most, is actually knowing what it is to be computer literate. There is a ton of information for our students to know in order to know the "new literacy skills." They must be able to find reliable information on the web and be able to know the difference between a reliable site and one that is less than reliable. Students must also know how to navigate a website to find the information they are searching for. Students today must have a larger skill base from which to call upon.

• Describe how the knowledge and experience gained in this course will influence your teaching practices going forward.

There is a ton of useful information I learned in this course. Some of the things I will take and use in my class are; internet based projects, using reliable websites, and helping my students to become computer and internet literate. There is a wealth of information out there for our students to use, our students need to be able to get to that information.

• Identify at least one professional development goal you would like to pursue that builds upon your learning in this course and develops your own information literacy or technology skills. Describe the steps you will take to accomplish this goal.

I am lucky enough that our district offers many technology based classes. I plan on taking as many as possible to help me get a better understanding of how to use technology to improve my teaching. Our students are growing up in a world of technology and we as teachers need to keep up with it as well.

Reflection

I think that there are many different ways that our students learn. There is not one learning theory that is better than the next. As a PE teacher I want my students to get in a lot of practice when we introduce a new skill. In order for my students to be successful they need to do the skill correctly over and over again. I would however like to introduce some new learning theories into my class.
I really like the idea of having my students chart in a spread sheet how the can improve their fitness levels. I think that it gives immediate feedback and is another way other than me telling them that they are doing a good job or could work harder. The other thing I would like to do with my students is to use a blog. I would use the blog to have students discuss activities they do outside of school.
Two goals I have for my classroom are to; continue to integrate technology and for myself to continue to new about new technologies. I think that there are a lot of cool things that I can do in my class that uses technology and also helps my students to better learn the subject matter. For myself, I will continue to take classes that teach about new technologies.

Voice Thread

This is the link to my voice thread.

http://voicethread.com/share/786915/

Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

I think that it is important for us as teachers to teach our students how to be able to work with other students. I believe that the learning is so much greater when our work with others. I think that it is important that when we have our students work together they do it in small groups (2-3) rather than large groups. I think that using smaller groups help to get all students involved and have a voice. Another thing that we also need to do as teachers is to use groups from time to time, it shouldn't be used all the time. Students do need to still be able to work independently. I think that when our students work together to solve a problem or work on a project each students brings a knowledge to the problem that the others may not have. By doing this I think our student learn more than by just working by themselves.

Constructivism in Practice

I think that forming and testing hypotheses is a way that our students can become higher level thinkers, and that goes hand in hand with Constructivism. We have to being higher level thinkers to be able to form a hypothesis. To come up with an educated guess as to an outcome makes us think at a higher level. We have to think about possible outcomes, which make sense and which don't. After coming up with a hypothesis we have to be able to test it. During the testing process our students will generate data which will either prove or disprove their original hypothesis. While looking at the data our students have collected they have to be able extract which is good and bad data. There is a lot of higher level thinking going on during this whole process. Our students have to look at various solutions or reasons to a problem that is proposed by the class or the teacher. When we have our students involved with the decision making process our students become higher level thinkers which is constructivism in practice.

Cognitivism in Practice

I think that there are many instructional strategies that correlate with the principles of cognitive learning. Cognitive knowledge is having a working knowledge about a certain subject not just memorizing facts. When it comes to cues, questions, and advance organizers the student must have and continue to have a working knowledge about that subject. I think that using cues and questions can help to facilitate that learning which will lead to have knowledge on the topic. Along with cue and questions students can also help to build that know by summarizing and note taking. Students must be able to add and subtract information in order to summarize a topic. When students do this they are working at a high cognitive level than just repeating what a teacher or book might have said. Have students be able to know what is important information and which information is secondary has those students working at a high level. The same goes for Note Taking. In the book "Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works" the author says that just repeating or writing note verbatim does not mean that the student truly knows the information. We as teachers want our students to be able to know and use the information we give them. To have cognitive knowledge about a subject students have to be able to think at a higher level.

Behaviorist Learning Theory

When it comes to behaviorist learning theory and reinforcing effort I can see a direct correlation between the two. As teachers we tend to praise behaviors that are positive in our classroom and punish behaviors that are negative. This find right in with what Skinner say about Operant conditioning and behaviorist learning theory. Although there are many different ways for our students to become and stay motivated, reward for good behavior and punishment for bad seem to be the most common and easiest way to reinforce effort.
Homework and Practice also fit into the BLT. They say the repetition is the mother of all learning. Doing homework and practicing something over and over will help students to better learn about a certain content area. Having students practice over and over will help students to learn about a subject matter but I don't think that it helps with higher order thinking.