After looking at my "Personal Theory of Learning," I find that I still feel the same way and I still believe students learn form their experiences and they will learn what is most important to them the quickest. I know that we as educators have to make the lesson real world as much as possible and it needs to be meaningful to the students or at least we have to figure out a way to get them to buy into the lesson. I have changed the way in which I do a number of things in my classroom and I am learning to have more group lessons as well as to get the students actively engaged because the more involved and actively engaged they are the more learning takes place. this course has made me see how technology can enhance learning and I realize that I use all of the learning theories at some time in my lessons and that there is a place in the curriculum for all of them.
I will use technology as often as I can and I will encourage the students to do the same. They will work more on presenting with power point and I will have them blogging more as well as trying other forms of technology. I think virtual field trips are marvelous and as often as I can find one to go along with the lesson I will use it in my instructions. I am trying to include the creation of a voice thread in my lesson I showed my students the voice thread I created and they seem to think it was cool so I would like to have the class complete one.
I would like to have my students blog instead of writing in their journals and I am going to start at the beginning of the year and have my students set up their sites as soon as they start school so they can begin blogging immediately. I am also going to implement virtual filed trips in my lesson plans in order for my students to be able to experience and get a visual of what it is we are studying. I want to start them out creating voice threads and have a situation already planned out when school starts that they will begin working on almost immediately in groups. Each group will have the same problem and they will have their specific tasks to analyze, make decisions about and perform. I do not see foresee any of the voice threads being the same.
