Reflection

My personal learning theory centered around not having a set theory and this has not changed through this course. I believe in flexibility and pulling from as many resources as you can because students are unique in their needs. I have used and pulled from all four learning theories depending on the situation at hand.
I do not foresee any significant immediate changes in my classroom instruction as a result of this course since I already incorporate as much technology as possible. I do plan to integrate Kidspiration and concept mapping more into my guided reading lessons. I tried it a few weeks ago and the students had success using it as a summarizing tool. I also plan to use more of the tools Microsoft Word has built in to help students improve their writing independently.
A long term goal I have is to begin collaborating with classrooms across town and maybe eventually across the nation. I need to develop a lesson utilizing Wikis, blogs and or/Skype to give the students a goal to work together towards. I would reach out to another teacher in my school or district to begin with. Eventually I would look to find a classroom from another state to colloborate with using contacts made through websites or even possibily Walden University.

Connectivism and Social Learning in Practice

The focus this week has been on cooperative learning, which has "students interact with each other in small groups in ways that enhance their learning," which parallels the primary concept of social learning theories. There are many ways technology can enhance cooperative learning. Email, blogs, skype, webquests and wikis are just a few of the many tools available to educators that can be used in cooperative groups. Technology today allows for students to be in different classrooms, different schools, different states or even different countries and yet still work together and learn from each other.

I also like the tools available that allow for organizing group members. I can not see third graders using them, but once into middle school, high school and even college the tools could be invaluable. Examples would be shared calendars and bookmarking.

Voice Thread

http://voicethread.com/share/1191381/

I took the name of the program literally and used Audacity to record myself describing my problem and then posted it to the VoiceThread project.