February 25, 2010

At the beginning of my graduate course entitled, Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology, I began the course by reflecting on my personal theory on learning. I began with stating that students learned best when learning was interesting, engaging and fun. I have also learned that students relate better to learning which fits into their past experiences. And, this class reiterated that as well as my beliefs in the theory of Jean Piaget and constructivist theory. According to Lever-Duff J. and McDonald, “Piaget theorized that children build cognitive structures during all developmental stages. When children are exposed to something new that easily fits into prior experiences, they assimilate it.”

When teaching 18-21 year old students real life skills, I bring tools to my lesson that include overheads, interactive DVD’s, video’s computer games, magazines, real-life examples as well as one-on-one, pairing students, and having them work in small groups. These seem to work to engage students, but I have learned some new tools in this course as well as the use of Microsoft tools. I have limited access for my students to use the Internet, so I have had students create power point presentations, but now we are using MS Excel to track a community project in which we bake and sell cookies to the school every week. My class is tracking how many cookies we sell each week, what each class order and a balance sheet, so we know how much money we have made at a given time and it is also teaching them how to make graphs and establish formula’s in Excel. For the holidays my class donated $119 for toys, which went to underprivileged children.

At the end of this course I have set two long-term goals. The first goal is to continue to incorporate the tools I learned in this course into my lessons. I am meeting this goal by incorporating computer use in my classroom. I have begun to demonstrate different media in which students may decide to use for the end of year project on their school jobs. They will be able to make a poster, create a power point presentation or a FlipCam Movie. My second goal is to find a new job where technology is embraced. In order to meet this goal I have moved forward in graduate school and plan to complete my degree by January, 2011.