Week+4+Reflections

Week 4 Reflections:

I spent most of this week finding research for using instruction that facilitates learning using technology. While most of the research and articles came from this course's readings and text, some of the sources were from ERIC and Fundamentals of Technology. I can say that after I finish this course, my style of teaching will have changed greatly due to the information and resources that I have gathered from this course. Already, I am taking less control of my classroom, allowing students to guide learning, communicating learning objectives more effectively, allowing flexibility in the way students demonstrate their learning, allowing students to set their own goals and learning styles, integrating more technology into my classroom, and expanding my own knowledge of technology and technology resources. I imagine that I will spend much of this summer exploring Universal Design for Learning's website, lesson builder, and resources page for Science.

Below is a portion of my final reflections from this week. I feel that it is extremely relevant to my posting this week, in that it demonstrates the research and articles that I have read to create the final reflections portion of our groups' work.

In deciding what instructional strategies to use for our multi-level classroom, I first focused on the literature and research for this class. Pitler (2007) suggests that students learn better in technology rich classrooms partly because students are more autonomous and it allows teachers to individualize instruction to students’ needs. In addition, instructional strategies that work best to help students acquire and integrate learning include the use of word processing application, organizing and brainstorming software, multimedia, and web resources. ( Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using Technology With Classroom Instruction That Works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Introduction, 1-14. ) With this in mind, we developed a progressional type lesson that allowed students to use this type of technology while working with specific learning objectives. In the first lesson, students use a combination of word processing programs and brainstorming software to create a plan for developing a story. The story progresses from a factual reference type of book to a fictional work within the last lesson. Once students have created a plan, then the learning expectations for story development are specified within a grading rubric. However, the means that the student uses to accomplish the story are flexible. As Pitler (2007) lays out in the Setting Objectives chapter of her book, “Set learning objectives that are specific but flexible” helps students to be more engaged by setting some of their own learning objectives. ( Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using Technology With Classroom Instruction That Works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Setting Objectives, 17-38. ) With this in mind, students can then use a combination of methods to create their stories. They can use traditional paper methods, multimedia, Photo Story, Movie Maker, iMovie, or Power point allowing them to work at their own comfort level within groups. GT students can go a step further by including an audio track, sound, and page turning effects to their presentations. Whereas students with special needs can facilitate their disabilities using a speech to text program or voice recognition program to participate in their learning groups. As a summative assessment, students will then take the information learned within the first two projects and create a fictional work entitled, “Who’s My Mommy?” In the final project, students are encouraged to use a variety of methods to produce the story addressing all students’ learning needs. Students can act out a play, create an animated story, create a digital storybook, etc. This theory is based on Concord’s model for change and the Universal Design for Learning. This lesson forms a “framework for using technology to maximize learning opportunities for every student” allowing teachers to address the “diversity of every learner and challenge students with high learning standards”. (Rose, D., & Meyer, A. (2002). //Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal design for learning.// Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Available online at the Center for Applied Special Technology Website. Retrived on October 5, 2009, from [] ). GT students are further challenged to complete the additional task of creating a movie trailer for their multimedia presentation. While this relates to the task of using multimedia tools, it integrates the reading objectives of effectively summarizing stories. The completed project set or unit set of lessons addresses many of the technology objectives, science objectives, and effectively applies reading objectives for students at the fourth grade level. Students must not just learn pieces of information, but transfer and apply the information to projects that are based in real world applications that model a real world job situation as research and the Constructivist theory suggests that this is one of the most effective ways for students to learn. (Southwest Educational Developmental Laboratory (1999). //Learning as a personal event: A brief introduction to constructivism.// Retrieved on October 5, 2009, from []). Project based, reflective thinking, application of knowledge to solve a problem, critical thinking and student based learning are the hallmarks of this learning unit. Back to 5364 Reflections: Teaching with Technology Reflections