Reflection on Personal Learning Theory

In the past eight weeks, I have spent much time learning about different learning theories and instructional strategies. Before I started, I still felt that the teacher lecturing was the best way to introduce new material. I now believe that I will use a more interactive method to teach new material and try to make even the introduction of new material more student-centered than teacher-centered. Using multi-media presentation material, I will let the students learn what words mean and have them choose images that will help with them learning new material. Another technology that I will use during teaching some of the cultural material I teach will be word processing to compare and contrast cultural ideas. Also I will add technology to help with summarizing and note-taking so that it can be posted on the web for students to review or see for the first time if they were not in class.

I learned much about having the students construct something of their own as they are learning to demonstrate their ability to apply what has been learned. In the future, I will have my students do more project oriented learning using Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and
VoiceThread. The VoiceThread application will be new for my students and I look forward to teaching them how to use it and seeing how they will use it to learn.

In the future, I would like to have the students in my class to use the internet and VoiceThread to be able to communicate with people whose first language is Spanish. I would like to exchange videos of projects my students have done in Spanish and get feedback from the Spanish-speaking students. To do this, I will first teach the students how to use VoiceThread. Then I will have my foreign language coordinator help me locate a school with a class willing to partner with my class. I would have the students e-mail the partner classmates to get to know them and then I would assign projects that would stretch them as they learn and trade information with the partner class.

Another long term goal I have would be to use technology in a more student-centered classroom approach as a learning tool and not concentrate so much on the teacher-centered classroom using technology as an instructional tool. One way I would achieve this is to make the technology I am already using in class more student-centered. In other words, when I make a PowerPoint presentation for new material, I would add some activites and slides that would have the students participating in the exercise. Also I would start using the digital recorder so that we can make videos and edit videos showing the students using Spanish in practical situations.

Technology is becoming more of a part of my classroom and I hope to make it a standard part of my classroom soon. I have seen how technology raises the enthusiasm level of the students and want to use it to enhance the learning of what is taught.