Oh... It’s Just a Reflection

When I began the Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology course at Walden University I initially posted that my personal learning theory was a mixture of all of them. Honestly, my personal learning theory hasn’t changed much. I still see how, given my content area, everyone of the learning theories has its place. Still, this is not to imply that I haven’t learned anything which would require me to make changes to my teaching strategies.

One immediate change that I am planning to implement in my music class is to use concepts maps as an aid during instruction. This tool will allow for me to display the information in a way that caters to multiple learning preferences. Another is to use voicethreads. This would allow students to create different types of media presentations and then other students would be able to comment on their creations.

With the information I gathered from this course I am also planning some not so immediate and more drastic changes to my classroom setup. One, which centers on the ideas presented in the social constructionism learning theory, is to increase the amount of student interaction. I am going to begin to design many of my lessons to be more project based so that the students will need to work together to complete the assignment. Another goal is to increase the amount of technology that we use. As it stands now I only have one computer in my class, but even with this disadvantage their are still many technology based activities that I could institute into my classroom. One example is the use of virtual field trips. This allows students to observe and learn information from anywhere on the planet. With these new types of activities and technology based tools our students are able to do things in the classroom that others before them could only dream of.

What do you see?

Lets work together. (social constructionism)

I have been studying some on the idea of cooperative learning. This is basically activities which are designed so that students learn in group projects. Since, as you may have guessed, my preferred learning theory is the constructionist theory these cooperative lessons would be categorized as social constructionism. I like this idea because it allows the students to understand the content on a deeper level, gives them a perfect example of how they will work in the “real world”, and it also helps them to learn social skills.

One activity for this type of method is presented in the book Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works. They describe a middle school teacher that assigns a two week movie project in which the students must present information about the lives of famous mathematicians. One very wise decision that the teacher made was to keep the groups relatively small in size. This will allow for each student to be able to contribute to the project (artifact) without being lost in a mass of other student suggestions.

Another Idea suggested by the book Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works is the idea of creating a website. I love this idea because the students are able to work outside of school. They are also able to show off their site. One issue that I am still trying to work the kinks out on is, how to let students show off their musical compositions. The music that we create in computer programs I can export as an mp3 but if I post a picture of their written compositions, the looker doesn’t get much out of it unless they can read music. This is not to mention the limited amount of space that I have on my site for storing. However, if the students had their own sites they would be able to post their school work and share their creations with the world, including their parents.

The one idea that I am the most excited about is called a voicethread. With it students can comment on pictures that are submitted to the thread. This would be really interesting for creating projects about composers, instruments, or large musical works. In a way these act a lot like blogs or wiki, which are also good cooperative learning activity facilitators, because the students are contributing to a main thought. I could see these types of activities working very well with large group assignments.

In each of these examples the students are creating something (yeah constructionism) and working together (social). I would love to see more and more activities like these instituted into the classroom.

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