Week 8 Blog Reflection

Looking back at my Personal Learning theory, I don’t believe I will be making any modifications because it was pretty inclusive of what I want to do in the classroom and this class only helped me get closer to incorporating technology into my daily lessons.

Some immediate adjustments I would like to make to my classes is to incorporate more technology though out my curriculum. I want to start using Blogs and graphic organizers in my classroom next year to help my students both interact with one another online collaboratively but also teach them to organize and synthesize key information so they will increase there learning.

Two long term changes I would like to make is to incorporate technology some how everyday but I will need to wait until the school budget catches up with what I want to do. I believe it is only a matter of time before all students will have daily access to technology in the classroom. Another long-term goal I have would be to set up a distance leaning situation with students form another country with student in my classroom in Michigan. I plan on looking into this next year, there is one teacher at Grandville who already is working with a classroom from Japan once a week and the students love it so I really think it would be a beneficial experience for everyone involved.

Voice Thread Post http://voicethread.com/#u389666.b530880.i2840697

Some of the strategies discussed this week in our text that I am looking to use next year are MOODLE, Blogs, and Wikis. All three of these would be no cost to me and are endorsed by our school for use in the classroom. Using anyone of these would help with Social Learning Theories, it opens up the web for students to create visually appealing content and add and share information ideas, and expertise within or outside the classroom or even outside school hours. “When student’s work in cooperative groups, they make sense of, or construct meaning for, new knowledge by interacting with others” (Pilter, 2007). Some of the group projects would be groups that I chose with defined duties for students and other projects would be student run and centered with teacher guidelines to make sure they stay on track.

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