EDLD+5364+Weekly+Reflections

This week revolved around the theory of constructivism. There are two learning theories of constructivism. One comes from Vygotski, a Russian psychologist, who theorizes the learner gains new information through various delivery methods and adds this to his or her baseline knowledge and thus creates new knowledge. The second comes for George Siemens that theorizes learning as more complex than just constructing knowledge but also creates connections between various sources of information. The two above mentioned theories as well as other theories on constructivism may vary slightly but all agree that learning is an individual and personal event (1999). Constructivism is a theory of learning. Students all have unique prior knowledge experiences. Their learning is in internally controlled though a variety of tools, resources, experiences and contexts. As students learn they have to process information assimilating new concepts or rejecting them. Learning should be active and reflective. Students should be given opportunities to verbalize their thoughts, exchanging idea with other students to make it more meaningful. Teachers have to rethink their role in the classroom learning environment. They need to become more of a facilitator than a stand and deliver of knowledge. This is hard for some educators who learned in a more traditional classroom where the teacher presented knowledge through lectors and students sat quietly and “absorbed” information or through drill and kill; then regurgitate knowledge through a worksheet or written paper. In a more modern classroom when students are placed in charge of their learning and given a chance to collaborate, the classroom can become noisy. Control takes on a new look. Students develop problem solving skills through planning and implementing their projects. Of course activities are overseen by a teacher to keep students on task and make sure that the intended objective of learning is followed. A project to design a playground that is meant to help students learn measurement skills must show that work incorporated into the project. It can include other aspects that are beneficial but this main skill should be highlighted. A finished project that only mentions location, equipment, maybe colors would not meet the learning objective/goal. Many teacher may feel threaten through this style of classroom learning. There are times especially if technology is in use where teachers may not know the answers and feel that they will look dumb in the eyes of their students. It is ok to let students that you do not know everything and this presents a powerful opportunity where a teacher can become a student and learn from them. A teacher can also show students how they can research and find the answers. Everyone learns daily in their life, either through life experiences or self-directed interest learning of a teacher.
 * Week 1 Reflection: **

One of the best tools to help with student directed learning is using computers. This technology allows teachers to differentiate instruction more efficiently, offering opportunities for higher level thinking skills to be used. Students can work cooperatively, make choices, and play a more active role in their learning. Technology provides a multisensory learning environment that reaches a large range of learning styles more effectively. The capabilities of text being read to a student that may struggle with reading, video clips help with the auditory learner. Interactive programs with role play, and manipulative capabilities will not only help the auditory learner but will help the tactile learner who is given a more active role in what they are learning. Since most internet as well as interactive software has written aspects incorporated the visual learn benefits as well. Our world is changing incrementally every day. Our method of teaching is not changing fast enough to keep up with this movement. Many classrooms are not much different from the one room school house. There may technology available but when it is used it is not used effectively. Overheads have been replaced by projectors and Elmos, but the methods of delivery are still stand and deliver. As educators we need to embrace the constructivism theory and put students more in charge of their learning to make it more meaningful.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2001). Using technology with classroom instruction that works, Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Southwest Educational development Laboratory, (1999). Learning as a personal event: A brief introduction to constructivism. Retrieved on October 4, 2009 from []


 * Week 2 Reflection **

The videos we watched were very informational. As a teacher we should be aware of the diversity of our learners. We may have GT, ADHD, dyslexic, special education, ESL, hearing impaired, visually impaired all in one classroom, this is not to mention the different learning styles of our students. A one size fits all delivery method of the curriculum no longer effective. We should take our cue as educators from the business and civic groups. They have worked to provide those with differences ways to assimilate into the world better. Adaptions such as speaker phones and closed captioning for hearing impaired, crosswalks with visual signals and beeps for the visually impaired, braille on the elevators and restrooms, and gradual curbs as well as wider entrances to buildings and rooms for those in wheel chairs can benefit everyone. Our brains process information differently and can be as varied as our fingerprints. We not only need to vary our delivery methods of information to our students but allow them to present what they have learned through varied media and assess them through various methods as well. Universal Design Lessons help teacher to more effectively teach this varied population of students. Technology is allowing us to be able at differentiate for all these variations in human learning. Several studies have shown that the use of technology has helped raise achievement in learning objectives; not only in test scores but, self-esteem as well. While no one can deny that learning and achieving knowledge is the most important goal of education feeling good about oneself is extremely important. The student that feels good about themselves and their learning environment will very likely become a better learning and therefore achieve those goals and objective much for efficiently

Lessonbuilder.cast.org(nd). Diversity of Learners. Retrieved on Oct. 5, 2009 form [|http://lessonbuilder.cas.org.php?sec=videos] Lessonbuilder.cast.org(nd). The Brain Research. Retrieved on Oct. 5, 2009 form [|http://lessonbuilder.cas.org.php?sec=videos] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Lessonbuilder.cast.org(nd). Universal Design and Universal Design for Learning. Retrieved on Oct. 5, 2009 form [|http://lessonbuilder.cas.org.php?sec=videos] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Lessonbuilder.cast.org(nd). Principals for Universal Design for learning. Retrieved on Oct. 5, 2009 form [|http://lessonbuilder.cas.org.php?sec=videos] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Page, M. S. (2002). Technology-enriched classrooms: Effects on students of low socioeconomic status. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 34(4), 389. Retrieved October 5, 2009 from the Interation Society for Technology in Education at @http://www.iste.org/AM/TEMplate.cfm?Section+Number_4_Summer_20021&Template=/MemberparentFileID=830. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">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 Web site. Chapter 1. Retrieved on October 5, 2009, from http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Reply

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Schacter, J. (1999). The impact of education technology on student achievement: What the most current research has to say. Santa Monica, CA: Milken Exchange on Education Technology. Retrieved from [].


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Week 3 Reflection **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">This week focused on the Universal Design Lesson. We learned the four main questions we need to ask to start designing the lesson.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">1. What will students learn? <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">2. Which strategies will provide evidence of student learning? <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">3. Which strategies will help students acquire and integrate learning? <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">4. Which strategies will help students practice, review, and apply learning? <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Using these guiding questions we were then given tools to accomplish the lesson. CAST has numerous tools and information to share, such as ebooks and UDL lesson builder template. The videos for the week focusing on the digital learner provide real-life examples of how technology can help the learner to achieve more. Web 2.0 also offered idea on what tools the internet provides to expand the learning experience.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">All of this just provides tools to put into our tool box to pull out as needed, but the most important idea that you must remember is that students are different. They come to you with different experience, prior knowledge, levels of achievement, interests, and motivations. It is up to us as educators to not be a Mrs. Donovan, Charlie Brown’s teacher. I think as teachers some try to offer a varied approach to the delivery of a lesson. Where we have a long road ahead is to convince teachers that it is ok to allow students to turn in varied projects to complete assignments or assessments. For some this will be hard because grading will at first seem harder to them, some will argue that the some students will take the easy way out and complete the assignment without much effort. Change is hard for some. If we could challenge teachers to just take small steps toward UDL integration I think it would make it easier. Start with one lesson in a unit until they are more comfortable to expand. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">To view my UDL follow link below. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">[]

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Creating the ebook was an adventure. I was a little apprehensive at first at tackling the book. The Cast ebook builder makes it almost impossible to do anything wrong. It was fun to create the book and I could see many uses in creating such books to enhance learning in the classroom. I used some features of other programs that I had not had much experience with in creating the graphics. I would like to become more proficient in making better graphics so that I would not have to worry as much about copyright issues when creating the books. I kept my first ebook fairly simple. As I create other ebooks I will work to add other features to the books. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">What a fun way for reteaching a concept. Students could use the coaches to give additional information to students, allowing them an opportunity to access to further without showing feeling intimidated in asking for more information. Students who need to have text read to them would be able to have that options while others who do not need that modification could skip this part. ESL student could listen to the text over and over as many times as they need without feeling self-conscious. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">[]
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Book Builder Reflection **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Rose. D., & Meyer, A. (2002)Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal design for learning. Alexandra, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Available online at the center for applied Special Technology Web site. Chapter 6. Retrieved on October 5, 2009, from Http://www.cast.org/teachingeeverystudent/ideas/tes/


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">Week 4 Reflection **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The idea of presenting information differently to reach many students in not a new idea, I have been aware of this practice and have been applying it since the late 1980’s. We have learned about learning styles and I think most teachers make a conscious effort to incorporate this into their lessons. Where we have been missing the boat, so to speak, is in allowing students to use these same differences as well as interests to share with us what they have learned. I believe this will be one of the biggest hurdles for teachers that have been teaching a while to overcome. Grading with a rubric instead of an answer key will be like letting go of a life line. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Some of the modifications mentioned in Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal design for learning Rose, D.,& Meyer, A. (2002) such as magnifiers for sight impaired are an easy modification that I see being used regularly. Technology has made other modification much easier such as a copy machine to enlarge work eliminating a magnifier or the text to speech option that computers now offer. There is even a small pen that will read text to the student without the need of a computer. Technology has brought numerous options for modifications to the classroom. It has also provided many resources to enhance a lesson or allow for assessment of knowledge to be varied. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">All of these options are lost if teachers do not receive the needed professional development to implement these modifications and strategies. With the budget crunch in Texas it will be even harder to deliver and receive this professional development. As Solomon, G. & Schrum, L. (2007) stated “ Even though massive amounts of money have been spent on training educators, we have not seen a real difference in the ways technology has been integrated into the classroom (Cuban, 2001; Laffey, 2004; Norris, Sullivan, Poirot, & Solloway, 2003; Williams & Kingham, 2003). How will lack of funds accentuate this problem? If teachers will no longer be able to travel for professional development then districts will be forced to provide their own development. This will give teachers a contact person to go to for follow-up if needed more easily. Online development will be another option, forcing teachers not comfortable with technology to begin the process of familiarizing themselves with it. Project Share has already taken the first step to offering teacher professional development as well as collaboration through technology.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Cuban. L(2001). Oversold and under used: Reforming schools through technology 1980-2000, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Laffey, J. (2004). Appropriation, mastery and mastery and resistance to technology in early childhood preservice teacher education. Journal of Research on Technology in Education. 36(4), 361-382

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Norris, C., Sullivan, T.,Poirot, J.,& Solloway, E. (2003). No access, no use, no impact: Snapshots surveys of educational technology in K-12. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 36(1), 15-28

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Pitler, H., Hubbel, E., Kuhn, M., Malenoski, K. (2007). Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works. Alexandria: Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Rose, D., & Meyer, A. (2002).Teaching every student in the digital age: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">﻿ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Universal Design for learning.Alexandria, VA:Assosciation for Supervision and Curriculum Development.Chapter 7.Available online at the Center for Applied Special Technology Web site.Retrieved October 5, 2009, from @http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Solomon, G., Schrum, L., (2007). Web 2.0 new tools, new schools. Eugene, Oregon: International Society for Technology in Education.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">Williams, H. S., & Kingham, M. (2003). Infusion of technology into the curriculum. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 30(3), 178-184

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> ** Week 5 Reflection **

One of this week’s readings focused on how to help student realize the importance of believing in effort and that effort pays off. I have used grades/averages in my classroom to motivate students to apply more effort or to encourage them to maintain effort in my classroom. I was unaware of research to corroborate this practice. My reason for beginning to use this practice was mainly to keep students from slacking off. I wanted them to see how even if they have good grades, a low grade can greatly effect subject average. In recent years this has been made easier through the use our online grade book. Students can see immediately with a couple of clicks of a mouse how a grade can raise or lower their average. “The instructional strategy of reinforcing effort enhances students’ understanding of the relationship between effort and achievement by addressing their attitudes and beliefs about learning.” (Pitler, 2007, p155). The second focus changing the look of assessment. Many teachers have learned to vary instruction but still rely on the same form of common assessments to show knowledge learned, usually at the end of a unit. As substantiated in Web 2.0, “Unfortunately, teachers may frequently fall back to the traditional ways of figuring out how well students have learned. However, it makes much more sense to have ongoing assessment – the way evaluators do that is known as “formative evaluation.” All this means is that we don’t wait until the “unit” is over to determine how well the students and we as educators are doing!“ ( Solomon & Schrum, 2007, p168). It is also interesting to think that assessment is a judge of us as educators, how well did we teach the objective. As a teacher if the majority of my students did not do well on an assignment, or test then I knew it was a teacher error. The assignment or test was either too hard or I did not do a good job of teaching the concept. I then would reteach the objective and retest or give an alternate assignment. Some teachers would just blame the students. Pitler, H, Hubbell, E, Kuhn, M, & Malenoski, K. (2007). //Using technology with classroom instruction that works//. Denver, CO: McREL

Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2007). //Web 2.0: New tools, new schools.// Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">