Reflection of my Personal Learning Theory

As I reflect on my own personal learning theory, I still feel that my teaching techniques align most closely with social cognitivism, but touch the other learning theories as well. I enjoy using a lot of social interaction between students to teach and learn concepts because students have their prior learning experiences and can contribute to our learning environment. Too many times a learning opportunity is passed because the students did not have time to process the information with a neighbor. I enjoy hearing conversations between students about topics because more often than not, a new idea is introduced between the students and I can take that idea and share it with the rest of the class.

If I were to make one modification to my own personal learning theory, I think that I would include more constructionism in my classroom. As of right now, I have a hard time including activities that allow the students to explore a new concept. Even though I do use some constructionism in my instruction, I think I can include more. I just cannot think of where I would be able to fit it in.

One immediate change I am going to make in my instruction is the use of a Voice Thread. On my weekly blog, I have the students write to a weekly prompt. This past week, they wrote their responses and I had them record their answers into a Voice Thread I created for them. I could not believe how much excitement they had to record their voices. After we had completed it, I sent the thread home to their parents and have gotten great responses.

Another change I am going to make is by trying to incorporate the creation of more artifacts. With the curriculum that I teach, there is not much opportunity to have student created artifacts, so I am going to have to pull out my creative side and build in the chance to do something new. I feel that this is going to be a challenge, but I am up for it.

One long-term goal that I have for integrating technology is to be able to use it for student centered learning, rather than as a teaching tool. I would like my students to be able to explore different technology pieces, such as Webspiration, or creating their own Voice Thread. I think I can accomplish this by showing them the tools, and having them investigate themselves. After that, I will be able to create assignments for them to use the tools.

Another long-term goal is to find new ways to use technology to get students excited about learning. I have seen first hand in the past couple weeks that students do get excited about the opportunity to use a new technology, but how can I keep that excitement up? I want to find a way to keep the students engaged at all times when using technology. I feel that the newness might wear off after awhile and I want to avoid that. I think to avoid having it wear off, I need to remain excited about using technology. At times I see that the students feed off of the teacher's attitude and if I keep a positive attitude, they will keep it too.

I have learned so much about myself throughout this course and a lot about the different teaching theories. I am happy to have had the opportunity to evaluate my own teaching techniques and have the chance to develop new ones.