Online Communities

I spend most of my online community time on Facebook. I do not engage in the games or applications though.  I live in Virginia and have family in South Carolina and Georgia.  I have also been able to reconnect with some high school friends and friends that served with me when I was in the Navy.  Facebook is a way for me to peak into the lives of those I love each day when I have a few minutes to spare. I have the application on my phone so it is easy to access the information.  I stay connected without a tremendous amount of time devoted to the task.  

I also have maintained a blog at various times. I enjoy freely writing and recording my thoughts of different topics. I have used blogs as part of the curriculum at Liberty University also. I have found that to be a positive experience as part of the learning. I enjoy getting feedback from my class on my thoughts and implementing others’ ideas into my educational philosophy.  Online learning communities continue to help me to grow as an educator. Thanks everyone!

Technology Thoughts

I have taught for three different counties now in my education career, and each county had their strong and weak areas in technology. The county that I am now in has a general expectation that teachers will use technology as a means of documenting attendance, grades, and assessing data after major test.  They also provide smart boards, response systems, and laptop carts for our classes. It is a general expectation that technology will be used to support student learning and assessing that learning in formative and summative testing.

The only teacher barrier I have noticed is the reluctance to use the technology available. Some teachers fear using it due to a low comfort level.  The only way to overcome that is for training to be provided consistently.  Training sessions should also be relevant to lessons and should give time for teachers to practice task rather than just watching or receiving  a sheet on how to perform task. Our school needs to incorporate more scheduled training to support teachers using technology in lessons.  Allotting time for relevant training will increase teacher comfort level with the hardware and software and encourage more widespread use of the many resources available to our county schools.

Reading Response

Being a teacher who philosophically follows the constructivist theory of learning, I liked the part of the reading assignment that alluded to constructivist theory and higher order thinking skills.  I feel that our students need to learn how to think on their own and feel confident in expressing their thoughts to others with whom they work. Many of my students do not really understand the concept of cooperative learning and the need to contribute their thoughts to the group. Most times students feel that they have no good ideas or that they are the only one who has good ideas. The idea of listening and sharing don’t always go together in the mind of my classes. I try to break that mold and help them to realize that everyone has something to learn and something to teach.  When this lesson is learned they can reap the benefits of problem solving and inquiry based learning. Coupling this with computer technology gives students limitless opportunities to learn.  “Computers allow students to process a great deal of information in complex ways that were not available to them before the advent of computing” (Thorsen, 2009, p. 5)

Reference

Thorsen, C. (2009). TechTactics: technology for teachers (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon.