Connectivism and Social Learning

One area of teaching that becomes the most rewarding for me is noticing instances when my students become teachers in my own classroom. I love catching my students taking the opportunities to share with each other and learn from each other. It is a fresh reminder that teaching is more than just lecturing 27 second graders for an entire school day. For me, teaching also includes providing opportunities in which my students can interact and be a part of a quality learning environment. In the web 2.0 era technology has transformed in ways that it is much easier to utilize in today's classrooms. With a little careful planning and instruction my students can engage in collaborative learning projects such as, producing multimedia, web research, webquests, and wikis (Hubbell, Kuhn, Malenoski, Pitler, 2007).

I think back on my first year of teaching and almost gawk at the realization that I had so much to learn about how students best acquire new information. I feel kind of bad for that first class I had. They probably sat through more boring lectures than I would want them to have to remember. I had a very limited idea understanding of how my students could best learn and what could be done to engage them deeply into the learning process. I was afraid of classroom chaos, and thought by setting my students loose and giving them freedom to learn together was a recipe for disaster.

It did not take long before I realized that my students were a resource to be tapped in to. I now regularly engage my students in collaborative work. My students are encouraged to cooperate and complete learning objectives together. Many times my students are asked to be a teacher of specific information. They are going to have to know something well enough that they will be able to teach another student what they know. Today, I had my students working in groups of three to create landforms posters. They were instructed on the procedures of the project, and then set loose to creatively construct their product. I was impressed when I saw the way students worked together, delegated tasks, and took learned information and applied it to their poster. I look forward to getting the posters out tomorrow. My students will get a chance to present their poster to their classmates and teach them all about their landforms. My students enjoy showing their work off and I am excited because my students have a chance to prove themselves as experts of specific information (Laureate Edu. Inc., 2009).

This week we were asked to identify a need for our school. Over the last few years I have witnessed my district's attempts to keep up with the speed of changing technology. To hear my thoughts and share your comments please visit my voicethread at the following address.

http://voicethread.com/share/1377459/

References:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). “Social learning theories” [Educational video].

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.