When looking back at my initial personal theory of learning, I realized that if I was going to become an effective teacher, I was going to have to take into account the many different learning styles of my students and try to incorporate as many of them into my lessons to get and keep my students engaged in their work.
During this course I got the chance to examine some different theories about how students learn. The one that caught my attention that most closely goes with my personal theory is Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. In this theory he describes nine different intelligences that every person possesses, only few of which can be measured by IQ tests (Lever-Duffy, J. & McDonald, J. (2008). Theoretical Foundations, pg.24). Gardner believes that every person possesses some degree of the nine intelligences, but he goes on to describe how usually one or more of the intelligences dominate (Lever-Duffy, J. & McDonald, J. (2008). Theoretical Foundations, pg.24). Gardner believes that a broader view of the intelligences of your students will change a teacher’s plan of instruction, because they would have to take these differences into account to maximize student learning (Lever-Duffy, J. & McDonald, J. (2008). Theoretical Foundations, pg.25). This is a belief I closely share. Through my first few years of teaching I have realized that students have different intelligences and learning styles, and to reach each students potential, I must provide them with opportunities to engage them in our activities using a wide variety of intelligences or learning styles that best suite them. I realized that many of my lessons that I have taught in the past were only appealing to a percentage of my students, and the rest desired to learn with some different forms of instruction. When I began to take this into account, my students have responded well and become more involved in my lessons. Instead of only reaching a certain number of students, I now have some sort of activities to grab the attention of most of my students. This is becoming more apparent as I begin to learn to use new technologies in the classroom. Many of the new technologies that can be used in the classroom have been developed to reach the different types of learners we may see in our classes. These technologies provide something for everyone, and this goes a long way in gaining and maintaining the attention of our students. As teachers it is our goal to reach all our students, and to do this we must take into account the different learning styles of our students when preparing lessons and activities to teach them the material we are trying to get a crossed to them. The new technology available to assist teachers in the classroom already does this for us, and is becoming a great tool to teach our students.
Some of the new technologies that I have discovered in this class are concept maps and virtual field trips. Before this course, I had no knowledge of either of these technologies to use in my classroom. I am a social studies teacher and can use concept maps for just about every lesson I teach. I love this because my students get to make connections from prior knowledge and connect to the new information they are learning. They get to see these connections and it gives them a better understanding of the material. Plus, I can put my students in charge in this activity, and this makes the students do the thinking instead of me pushing them to what I want them to say. I also found some great sites from this course for virtual field trips. This gives my students some hand on learning experiences that they would never get anywhere else. Students are not only getting new information, they are also getting visual that will help them retain the information being taught, and this will help more of our students succeed in class. I hope to incorporate these new types of activities into my classroom this year. I feel that this will help keep my students engaged, and since they will be running the class, they will be more invested in their work. I feel that this will make them want to learn in my class, and this is the most important thing when it comes to them retaining the information I am teaching to them.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Voice Thread
I had a good time coming up with my voice thread. It took me a while to figure things out, but I think I finally got it. I hope you all enjoy it.
The link to my voice thread is http://voicethread.com/#u426532.b572080.i3055802
Take care,
MS
The link to my voice thread is http://voicethread.com/#u426532.b572080.i3055802
Take care,
MS
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Cooperative Learning
In this weeks resources they talked about cooperative learning. They talked about the importance of cooperative learning activities where knowledge is discovered by students and transferred into concepts to which the students can relate to (Orey, 2001). In this type of learning, learning takes place through dialog among students in a social setting (Orey, 2001). To me this seems to be a very important piece of teaching in the future. When we do cooperative learning activities, we are not only teaching students new material, but we are teaching our students important real world skills that will help them in the future. Students must learn to work with others to research, analyze, and evaluate information while coming up with a final product. When we do these cooperative learning activities, especially ones where each group is to create an artifact to present to the class, the students seem to be engaged in their work, and these are the types of activities and lessons that they will retain information from.
In this weeks DVD chapter on cooperative learning, Dr. Orey talked about using a jigsaw cooperative learning activity in his classroom. I think that most of us have tried a similar activity in our classes in the past. This is a great way to get students more familiar with cooperative learning activities, and it is a great lesson because it forces each group member to teach a portion of the information to their fellow group members, and teaching someone else something is a great way to learn something.
In this weeks required reading from our course textbook on cooperative learning, they gave some examples of technology to use in the classroom that uses cooperative learning activities that correlate with the social learning principles. One that caught my eye was WebQuests. These WebQuests allow students in a class or from multiple locations work together to lean about a particular subject or to tackle a particular project or problem (Pitler, 2007, pg 145). Students can interact with students from other classes or schools in ways similar to things that they often use like facebook or email. I feel that these types of activities would keep my students engaged on the material better than a lecture or worksheet would. My students are very competitive, and I feel that this type of activity would force them to do research on a topic so they could perform well in the WebQuest. This student and peer centered learning helps the learner develop a deeper understanding of the content. These types of activities are activities that I feel would actually make my students want to come to class and do work, and this would increase the learning taking place in my classroom.
References
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. Baltimore: Author.
Orey, M.(Ed.). (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Main_Page
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
In this weeks DVD chapter on cooperative learning, Dr. Orey talked about using a jigsaw cooperative learning activity in his classroom. I think that most of us have tried a similar activity in our classes in the past. This is a great way to get students more familiar with cooperative learning activities, and it is a great lesson because it forces each group member to teach a portion of the information to their fellow group members, and teaching someone else something is a great way to learn something.
In this weeks required reading from our course textbook on cooperative learning, they gave some examples of technology to use in the classroom that uses cooperative learning activities that correlate with the social learning principles. One that caught my eye was WebQuests. These WebQuests allow students in a class or from multiple locations work together to lean about a particular subject or to tackle a particular project or problem (Pitler, 2007, pg 145). Students can interact with students from other classes or schools in ways similar to things that they often use like facebook or email. I feel that these types of activities would keep my students engaged on the material better than a lecture or worksheet would. My students are very competitive, and I feel that this type of activity would force them to do research on a topic so they could perform well in the WebQuest. This student and peer centered learning helps the learner develop a deeper understanding of the content. These types of activities are activities that I feel would actually make my students want to come to class and do work, and this would increase the learning taking place in my classroom.
References
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. Baltimore: Author.
Orey, M.(Ed.). (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Main_Page
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Constructivist and Constructionist Learning Theories
On this weeks assignment for our blog, we were first to look back at the constructivist/constructionist learning theories. From our course DVD, Dr. Orey explained the difference between constructivism and constructionism learning theories. Dr. Orey said that constructivism is a theory of knowledge stating that each individual actively construct his/her own meaning (Laurete, 2008). He went on to say that constructionism is a theory of learning that states people learn best when they build an external artifact or something they can share with others (Laurete, 2008). To me the theory of constructivism is enhanced by the theory of constructionism. All people construct their own meaning to new information being presented to them based on prior knowledge or experiences. When people then get the opportunity to work with this information and construct something with it, they gain a better understanding of the information, and this may affect the way that we construct our own meaning of the information.
Looking back at our course text Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works, we got the opportunity to explore the instructional strategy of “Generating and Testing Hypotheses”. When students generate and test hypotheses, they are engaging in complex mental processes, applying content knowledge like facts and vocabulary, and enhancing their overall understanding of the content (Pitler, 2007). This strategy uses a lot of the constructionist learning theories because the students are constructing an artifact in which they are using a higher level of thinking to analyze and problem solve on material they are learning in class. Being a Social Studies teacher, this was something that was interesting to me because for most of the lessons that I teach, we can do some sort of problem solving where we can look at a problem/situations with their given obstacles, and try to come up with some sort of resolution that could have drastically change a major moment in our worlds history. Also, we could also do an historical investigation where students construct hypotheses about historical events for which there is no agreed –upon resolution (Pitler, 2007). I found a project from this weeks resources from the project-based learning site http://pbl-online.org/ called the Magic Bullet where our students would reopen the cold case of the JFK assassination, focusing on ballistic evidence. This activity was modeled after the popular television shows CSI and Cold Case. Students would work in groups and become mock investigators who reopened the Kennedy assassination. This activity to me would be a great activity for my class when it comes to generating and testing hypotheses. For my students, they would get to explore many websites and books presented to them in this project, and they would construct a presentation where they are able to analyze historical forces and create a reasoned explanation for events. This hands on learning and use of higher level of thinking to create the final product would give my students a better understanding of a historical event, one that they would have a better chance of retaining.
Resources:Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008). Constructivist and Constructionist Learning Theories. [Motion picture]. Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. [DVD]Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
http://pbl-online.org/
Looking back at our course text Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works, we got the opportunity to explore the instructional strategy of “Generating and Testing Hypotheses”. When students generate and test hypotheses, they are engaging in complex mental processes, applying content knowledge like facts and vocabulary, and enhancing their overall understanding of the content (Pitler, 2007). This strategy uses a lot of the constructionist learning theories because the students are constructing an artifact in which they are using a higher level of thinking to analyze and problem solve on material they are learning in class. Being a Social Studies teacher, this was something that was interesting to me because for most of the lessons that I teach, we can do some sort of problem solving where we can look at a problem/situations with their given obstacles, and try to come up with some sort of resolution that could have drastically change a major moment in our worlds history. Also, we could also do an historical investigation where students construct hypotheses about historical events for which there is no agreed –upon resolution (Pitler, 2007). I found a project from this weeks resources from the project-based learning site http://pbl-online.org/ called the Magic Bullet where our students would reopen the cold case of the JFK assassination, focusing on ballistic evidence. This activity was modeled after the popular television shows CSI and Cold Case. Students would work in groups and become mock investigators who reopened the Kennedy assassination. This activity to me would be a great activity for my class when it comes to generating and testing hypotheses. For my students, they would get to explore many websites and books presented to them in this project, and they would construct a presentation where they are able to analyze historical forces and create a reasoned explanation for events. This hands on learning and use of higher level of thinking to create the final product would give my students a better understanding of a historical event, one that they would have a better chance of retaining.
Resources:Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008). Constructivist and Constructionist Learning Theories. [Motion picture]. Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. [DVD]Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
http://pbl-online.org/
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Cognitive Learning Theory
This weeks resources on the cognitive learning theory stressed the importance of making as many connections as possible to a piece of information so our students can then use these connections to get back at this information (Orey, 2001). This allows students to connect new information to prior knowledge, and these connections help the students retain the information long term. Throughout this weeks resources, they gave us many examples of multimedia advance organizers and how they could be used in the classroom.
In this weeks discussion post we were to look at our course textbook and explore the sections on Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers, and Summarizing and Note Taking. In these sections they gave example of many advance organizers to use in the classroom were our students would use a higher lever of thinking to make as many connections as possible on information being presented to the them. The one that caught my eye that I want to use in my classroom next year was the PowerPoint advance organizer. I teach History so an example of how I would use this in the classroom was where I would have my students try to predict the causes of WWII and how the War started. There my students would brainstorm from prior knowledge the conditions around the world prior to the war, and they would come up with a hypothesis on why they believed the war started. I have pulled up some videos from United Streaming to help with their prior knowledge, and after the activity is done they have a video to watch from United Streaming to see how the war started. We then could see how accurate our predictions were. To end the lesson we could remake our PowerPoint organizer after we realized what the actual causes of the war were, and hopefully this will help my students have long term memory of the condition prior to the war that became actual causes of WWII. I then began to look at concept maps and virtual field trips, and these types of activities are more examples of cognitive learning technologies that will help our students make connections between prior knowledge and new information that they can visually see for themselves. I began to think of how I could use concept maps in my classroom, and then I began to think on how I could use it today. I am a football coach, and we have started our mini camps were we start from scratch to teach everything from stances, to alignment, to schemes. I thought back to yesterday when I worked with the offensive line. In our chalk talk meeting before we went out to the field, I think it would be a great review of what we did yesterday if we had the lineman do a concept map where they could explain the important points of a particular scheme. This activity would be lead by the older, more experienced lineman, and this would help our younger line understand the concept of the scheme. This should help them remember the important coaching points, and hopefully will lead to them remembering this information long term.
Overall, what I got from this weeks resources was ideas of ways to use technology to make our students use a higher level of thinking to take what they already know and make connections to new information, and this should lead to them retaining more of the information. For me in history, instead of just going over the information, I am forcing them to make connections from an action that happened in the past, and how this action lead to other events in history. This has been the most useful class we have taken so far because it has provided us with many examples of activities and technologies that we could use everyday in our classroom that will promote a higher level of thinking from our students and help them retain important information.
References
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. Baltimore: Author. “Cognitive Learning Theories”
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Article: Novak, J. D. & Cañas, A. J. (2008). The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct and use them, Technical Report IHMC CmapTools 2006-01 Rev 01-2008. Retrieved from the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition Web site: http://cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/ResearchPapers/TheoryUnderlyingConceptMaps.pdf
In this weeks discussion post we were to look at our course textbook and explore the sections on Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers, and Summarizing and Note Taking. In these sections they gave example of many advance organizers to use in the classroom were our students would use a higher lever of thinking to make as many connections as possible on information being presented to the them. The one that caught my eye that I want to use in my classroom next year was the PowerPoint advance organizer. I teach History so an example of how I would use this in the classroom was where I would have my students try to predict the causes of WWII and how the War started. There my students would brainstorm from prior knowledge the conditions around the world prior to the war, and they would come up with a hypothesis on why they believed the war started. I have pulled up some videos from United Streaming to help with their prior knowledge, and after the activity is done they have a video to watch from United Streaming to see how the war started. We then could see how accurate our predictions were. To end the lesson we could remake our PowerPoint organizer after we realized what the actual causes of the war were, and hopefully this will help my students have long term memory of the condition prior to the war that became actual causes of WWII. I then began to look at concept maps and virtual field trips, and these types of activities are more examples of cognitive learning technologies that will help our students make connections between prior knowledge and new information that they can visually see for themselves. I began to think of how I could use concept maps in my classroom, and then I began to think on how I could use it today. I am a football coach, and we have started our mini camps were we start from scratch to teach everything from stances, to alignment, to schemes. I thought back to yesterday when I worked with the offensive line. In our chalk talk meeting before we went out to the field, I think it would be a great review of what we did yesterday if we had the lineman do a concept map where they could explain the important points of a particular scheme. This activity would be lead by the older, more experienced lineman, and this would help our younger line understand the concept of the scheme. This should help them remember the important coaching points, and hopefully will lead to them remembering this information long term.
Overall, what I got from this weeks resources was ideas of ways to use technology to make our students use a higher level of thinking to take what they already know and make connections to new information, and this should lead to them retaining more of the information. For me in history, instead of just going over the information, I am forcing them to make connections from an action that happened in the past, and how this action lead to other events in history. This has been the most useful class we have taken so far because it has provided us with many examples of activities and technologies that we could use everyday in our classroom that will promote a higher level of thinking from our students and help them retain important information.
References
Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. Baltimore: Author. “Cognitive Learning Theories”
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Article: Novak, J. D. & Cañas, A. J. (2008). The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct and use them, Technical Report IHMC CmapTools 2006-01 Rev 01-2008. Retrieved from the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition Web site: http://cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/ResearchPapers/TheoryUnderlyingConceptMaps.pdf
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Behaviorist Theory in the Classroom
In looking at this week’s resource in Using Technology With Classroom Instruction That Works, we were to look at the reinforcing effort & homework and practice sections and reflect on the instructional strategies in these sections and how they relate to the behaviorist learning theory. In the reinforcing effort section, they modeled many different activities using technology where students make the connection between effort and achievement by making graphs representing their own effort and achievement. To me this section showed the use of the behaviorist theory to increase a student’s effort in class. The goal of behaviorist techniques in education is to promote behaviors that are desirable in the classroom and discourage those that are not (Orey, 2001). From the examples in this section that is what they are doing. They give examples of activities using spreadsheets and rubrics where the students got to chart their own effort and then see their grades. In most findings, if not all, the more effort that was given, the better the grades were for the student. This tries to promote the idea that giving better effort will give you a better grade, and this will work in promoting desirable behaviors in class. This is a part of observational learning where they use shaping to breakdown a desired behavior and reinforce it as it progresses towards the overall goal (Orey, 2001). The homework and practice section had similar activities that teachers could use to come up with different methods to provide feedback that will help their students practice particular skills until they get the desired outcome (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, Malenoski, pg. 195). This goes along with the behaviorist theory as well.
MS
References
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Pg. 195
Orey, M. (Ed.). (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/
MS
References
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. Pg. 195
Orey, M. (Ed.). (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction, and Technology
Here is my blog page that I will be using for this course. It's the same as the last one, so I hope to here from everyone soon. Take care, MS.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Reflection for the Course
Before taking this class, I had very limited computer and technology skills. I had the basic internet skills needed to find material, but I didn’t know what blogs, bloglines, wikis, or podcasts were, and I didn’t have an idea of how to figure out how to use any of these skills. This course made me explore these technologies, and from this I was able to see ways to use these in my classes in the future. Before this class I had no desire to change the ways I have been teaching in my classroom the last couple of years. But this class opened my eyes to a whole bunch of activities that I could use that will use skills my students already use outside of school, skills that I feel will keep my students actively engaged in more of my lessons. From this course I have gained a desire to learn how to implement these new technologies into my classroom and use these technologies to get my students to use 21st century skills in my class.
The most valuable thing that I have taken from this course is I have realized that if I want to successfully teach my students 21st century skills I must be willing to put the time in to learn and develop new activities and techniques to teach these skills to my students. From this course I have realized that if I put a little extra time in, I can learn new skills to use to teach my students. These new skills I have learned from this course have given me many new ideas when it comes to activities for different lessons that I teach. For the first time in my teaching career I want to take time to develop new lessons to use in my classroom. From this course I have realized that I myself have to be a lifelong learner when it comes to teaching. I realized that I need to be open minded and willing to take chances and try new things, and I must try to keep up with technology, since all our students now and in the future, will be technology natives. I must continue to experiment with these new technologies to become more familiar with ways to use them in my classes.
My goals for the next two years are to transform my current classroom to one where I become more of a facilitator than a dictator. This will be an adjustment for myself. I have taught my class like I was taught myself, and I have not used enough problem solving and critical thinking with my students. I feel these are very important 21st century skills that I must implement into my classroom. This is the first goal that I have. My second goal is to use the new technologies that we have learned in this class in my classes. I feel that these new technologies could be used to do some interesting and fun activities with my students. I will try to use these new technologies to come up with new activities to add to lessons that I have already created. More importantly, I feel that by using these new activities in the classroom I will be accomplishing my first goal, since many of these activities deal with critical thinking. This course has motivated me to use the new skills and technology that we learned in my classes, and I have challenged myself to take the time necessary to develop these lessons for the use in my classes next year.
The most valuable thing that I have taken from this course is I have realized that if I want to successfully teach my students 21st century skills I must be willing to put the time in to learn and develop new activities and techniques to teach these skills to my students. From this course I have realized that if I put a little extra time in, I can learn new skills to use to teach my students. These new skills I have learned from this course have given me many new ideas when it comes to activities for different lessons that I teach. For the first time in my teaching career I want to take time to develop new lessons to use in my classroom. From this course I have realized that I myself have to be a lifelong learner when it comes to teaching. I realized that I need to be open minded and willing to take chances and try new things, and I must try to keep up with technology, since all our students now and in the future, will be technology natives. I must continue to experiment with these new technologies to become more familiar with ways to use them in my classes.
My goals for the next two years are to transform my current classroom to one where I become more of a facilitator than a dictator. This will be an adjustment for myself. I have taught my class like I was taught myself, and I have not used enough problem solving and critical thinking with my students. I feel these are very important 21st century skills that I must implement into my classroom. This is the first goal that I have. My second goal is to use the new technologies that we have learned in this class in my classes. I feel that these new technologies could be used to do some interesting and fun activities with my students. I will try to use these new technologies to come up with new activities to add to lessons that I have already created. More importantly, I feel that by using these new activities in the classroom I will be accomplishing my first goal, since many of these activities deal with critical thinking. This course has motivated me to use the new skills and technology that we learned in my classes, and I have challenged myself to take the time necessary to develop these lessons for the use in my classes next year.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
21st Century Skills
I am currently realizing the importance of teaching our students 21 Century Skills to better prepare them for the future. I began exploring the website Partnership for 21st Century Skills. This website has emerged as the leading advocacy organization for implementing 21st century skills into education. What they are trying to do at this website is bring together leaders in the business community, and educational leaders to come up with a vision for 21st century education to help our students become successful citizens and workers in the 21st century. Their goal is to get schools, districts, and states the tools and resources necessary to change the current ways of teaching, and help implement technology and 21st century skills into education. In short, they are trying to get the U.S. to align classroom environments with real world environments by implementing 21st century skills into the classroom.
This website talks about the gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need 21st century communities and workplaces. I feel that this is a very good website. It is easy to navigate from topic to topic, and there is very useful information on this website. From this article you have access to many articles and videos on the subject matter. Even better, you have access to the states that are already involved in the program, and you have access to their goals and standards. From reading these you get a better idea of how some of these programs are being assessed and you get an idea of how some states are redesigning their schools to infuse some of these new skills.
I feel this websites is not only a good website, but it also is pushing the schools in the right direction. It gets the creative juices flowing, and as it gains support will have a profound affect on education in the future.
This website talks about the gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need 21st century communities and workplaces. I feel that this is a very good website. It is easy to navigate from topic to topic, and there is very useful information on this website. From this article you have access to many articles and videos on the subject matter. Even better, you have access to the states that are already involved in the program, and you have access to their goals and standards. From reading these you get a better idea of how some of these programs are being assessed and you get an idea of how some states are redesigning their schools to infuse some of these new skills.
I feel this websites is not only a good website, but it also is pushing the schools in the right direction. It gets the creative juices flowing, and as it gains support will have a profound affect on education in the future.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
How Should I Use a Blog in My Classroom
I have been thinking about how I could use a blog in one of my history classes. I figured that I would use the blog to go over a topic we just learned in class. I then would have to sign out the computer lab. I then would have to come up with questions that I could use to give some sort of structure to the blogging. I then began to wonder if there was a way that I could make the blog private to just the students in my class. I then began to wonder of how I was going to walk around and make sure my students were on task. Does anyone have any ideas on how I could have a successful blogging session in my classes?
Friday, March 6, 2009
Using technology to teach Social Studies
I am High School Social Studies teacher who is currently taking college courses to get my masters in Technology in the Classroom. We are currently doing an assignment where I have to create my own blog. This is pretty much my first experience with blogging. I didn't even know where to start. Being a person with very limited computer skills, this is all new and I'm sort of just feeling my way around. Since I have to make a blog page, I might as well make it worth while. What I am trying to find out is some ways that I could use technology in my classroom to teach my Social Studies classes. I am looking for any idea that you might have for me on any topic in Social Studies. Can you help me?
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