Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology Course Reflections

After completing this course my personal learning theory involves a combination of behaviorist, cognitive, constructionist, and social learning theories. I believe they all play a role in learning. Behaviorism is the basis for motivation to learn. For a learner to have a desire to learn it needs to be rewarding to them in some way. Cognitism describes how as new knowledge is gained it is processed and organized into schemas the are developed based on our individual experiences which help us create understanding and meaning out of that knew knowledge. Constructionism is the creation of experiences with the new knowledge and the processing of that knowledge through building artifacts to represent the knowledge. Through these experiences and building processes knowledge is processed in many in depth and meaningful ways that help to make it memorable. Learning through socialism allows the learner to share their ideas about the knowledge and gain other's perspectives on them. Social learning also helps us process and reflect on the knowledge as it pertains to our society and to develop a common knowledge to help us further the collective knowledge of our society.

One change I plan to make to my instructional practices include finding more ways to include constructionism in my classroom. I want to make my classroom more student centered by decreasing the amount of time I am feeding information to my students and increasing the amount of time my students are physically manipulating that information in building that information into projects. One technology tool I learned about in this course that I would like to use for this is the building of concept maps. I would also like to use more virtual lab and field trip experiences than what I currently use to create more complete and meaningful experiences for my students.

To pursue my goal of increasing constructionism in my instruction, I plan to include at least one technology project for every unit I teach. The projects may include putting together power point reports, constructing concept maps, wiki projects, or creating a pod-cast.

To pursue my goal of increasing the number of virtual experiences I provide my students, I plan to use web searches to locate one additional on-line virtual experience each school term for each course I teach.