Learning Theories and Comps

hey Lindsay,
After re-reading ALL of the submissions about learning theories, I have decided to print out some of them to put in my comps folder. This class has had many good assignments that can be used in that regard.

Learning Theories and Computer Integration

I enjoyed learning and reading about different learning theories. This project reminded me of college and the various theories of education. It was a nice refresher course on the history of education. I was interested to learn about social constructivism. I did not realize there was a difference between constructivism and social constructivism.
Throughout this project, I was interested to see the how the examples given by each of us varied tremendously. I say this not only because we each had a different theory, but because some examples were categorized differently from what I would have done. For example, one of my group members considered www.starfall.com a constructivist website. I disagreed and viewed it as more behaviorist. I personally like "starfall" and have it as an option for my children. However, I think the decodable text and repetitive nature of the website makes it more predictable. When I think of predictable, I think of behaviorism, due to the lack of higher level thinking.
Overall, I enjoyed this project. I feel it brought about many discussions within our group.

Spring Break

How wonderful it was to take a week away from all the worries in the world! I chose to spend the majority of my break at the beach, my favorite place to escape to. From the drive down to the beach until the day I returned, I experienced several uses of technology within one piece: The Garmin. I laughed at my husband when he received this as a gift for Christmas. After this trip, I want one of my own. I typed in the beach address into the Garmin before I left my driveway. It automatically recognized the address before I could finish typing. Throughout the trip, I chose to deviate slightly from the Garmin's path. I took a few different turns my dad had suggested so I would arrive sooner. The Garmin would automatically recalculate itself when I did this. It was very helpful, because it also told me where to turn and when. The Garmin also tells you how many miles until your next turn. This works great with my personality. I knew exactly what to expect and when. My favorite feature is how the Garmin tells you your arrival time. I went through a drive through at one point and it quickly recalculated the arrival time. You can also tell whether or not you are speeding, because the time will change to an earlier one if you are. Overall, I was pleased with the Garmin and my experience with a new piece of technology. It was like receiving a new toy!

Learning is....

Learning means a lot of things to me. I think learning is any new information taken from an experience. For example, I went to Academy tonight to look for a tennis racquet. Like anything else in life for sell, there are items that are more expensive than others. I knew that the name-brand racquet must be more, however I wasn't sure why. After holding several tennis racquets, I realized that the more expensive rackets were lighter and more comfortable to hold. Bingo! That is why they were double the amount. I will consider this what I learned today! Pretty neat learning for Spring Break. It just happened to be the most recent thought on my mind.
I was interested to see the other definitions of learning shared from my group members. I agreed with their definitions, however I did not think to word them the same way. I think the important thing to remember when we think about children learning-is how we are teaching. I know I personally respond better to hands-on/visual experiences. Some children, on the other hand, are more abstract and prefer more straight-forward teaching. As long as we keep a healthy variety of teaching methods, I think we are always reaching out to our children's needs!

photo story & audacity

Audacity and Photo Story are two programs that I have been learning about lately. The social studies course I am currently taking required us to do a group presentation this week in class. We were each given articles to read, do research on, and share in the form of a presentation. We decided to survey several children and ask them what they think a good social studies teacher does. In order to share their responses, I had to download a program to record their voices. This was going fine until I inserted their clips into my group's power point and emailed it back to her. What do you know... and the clips were not working from my group member's computer. I had saved the files incorrectly. So, we finally discoverd that I needed to email them to her so she could save them to her computer and then reinsert them in the power point. That solved the problem and we were able to successfully present our power point. I plan to use audacity now! I really like its simplicity. It is easy to use and easily accessible.
Photo Story is the other program I am working toward learning how to use. Our class recently published a book. I want to record each child reading their page of the book while viewing the pages being turned in the book. A girl in my social studies class did this with Is There Really A Human Race? It was precious! I am hoping to scan the photos in this weekend and get started on it. I think it would make a great literacy center for my kindergarten children to visit as well as a sweet end of the year gift to my children. After all, this is their book!

technology helpers

what a great idea to have upper grade students available for a technology consult! Sometimes my second graders even help me, but (finally) I am usually able to stay one step ahead of them. The little boy who lives next door to me has bailed me out many times. I think part of the reason is that kids just aren't afraid of technology. They have grown up with it and they are comfortable experimenting. I am always afraid that I will permanently lose a file or screw something up. I have found that children are much more patient teachers than adults are.

I agree with Emily about typing. That's all we learned in high school: typing, typing, and more typing. It reminds me of round robin reading...there is not much meaning, but a lot of repetition. The class should have been called "Typing 101". I have to say, I did learn how to sit up properly when writing and what fingers to use to type what letters. That helped me build a foundation of some kind, however it was not meaningful to me until instant messaging became so big on AOL. Then it was text messaging from cell phones, and now it is "facebook" and "my space". Wow, how times have changed! I can only imagine what schools will be doing with kids once I have children of my own.
This brings me to my next thought: students teaching teachers. Our assistant principal included something interesting in his Friday Memo. He said a fifth grade student came to a second grade classroom to teach her how to use a technology program. How wonderful would that be for our school to create a list of students who are proficient in technology and which programs they are particularly strong in. I would love to learn directly from children for a change. I learn from children every day, however this would be a unique opportunity and experience to have for a change. Perhaps this is something to mention for resources within our school.