Reflection

While I still firmly believe in Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences and Bloom’s Taxonomy, with the information I learned in this course now will add some of the theories of other behaviorists to my personal theory of learning.
I knew that cooperative learning is an important learning strategy, but now I realize that it is built on research by Vygotsky and is critical in the high tech world of our students today. They will have to know how to cooperatively work with not just someone else in their own office, but possibly someone from an entirely different country and culture. Combining technology with the most basic form of learning from those directly involved in our lives from birth to death is astounding to me.
I also have known that being actively involved in learning makes for much stronger memory recall and better comprehension. What I didn’t realize before is how much research supports this theory. This theory of Constuctionism has been supported by Piaget, and even the first behaviorist Jon B. Watson, who theorized that in the stimulus-response mode individuals responded to the environment around them (Smith, 1999) in observable changes in behavior.
Immediate changes I plan when the opportunity arises in my teaching situation will be to use a more creative environment. Of particular interest to me is the concept mapping to use for organization of concepts and information. The other learning tool I plan to incorporate is voicethread due to the ease of operation and the limitless variety of ways it can be used. My plan for achieving these goals is to spend time this summer exploring the possibilities through internet research on how others have used these tools in a classroom setting and actually exploring more personally with what can be done with this technology.
Long term goals are to find good homework sites that support reading. This is an area of deficiency for me and one I plan to work on. Again, I will cruise the internet as well as ask classmates and colleagues for good websites they may have come across. Another long term goal will be to get more staff on board with what can be done with technology. Sharing websites and learning tools will support that goal. I will also have to approach the technology people within the school district about making it possible for students to have access to personal email addresses within the district for those that don’t have computers at home.
I look forward reviewing the new websites made available to me in this course. I find lesson planning to be a creative experience. It will fun to see what is actually out there to incorporate into active, multiple intelligence, cooperation based lesson plans.


References:

Smith, M.K. (1999) ‘The behaviourist orientation to learning’, the encyclopedia of
informational education,www.infew.org/biblio/learning-behaviourist.htm, Last
update: September 03, 2009.