Responces for Week 7

Constructivism is a psychological theory of knowledge which argues that humans construct knowledge and meaning from their experiences. By creating meaningful expierecnes through technology in the classroom it allows the students to learn from experiencing. There are so many ways which you can bring technology into the classroom like blogs, networking, wiki's, maps, webs, smart boards,video, audio, games. One example of how this could work in the classroom is by having students that are learning about third world countries play a game online where they have to survive under the same circumstances in the third world countries. This gives students a real look with having to go to a third world country. Another way is using Brain Pop and Brain Pop Jr. in the classroom. The kids love watching the clips and it really explains things well. Then there follow up activities and quizes that the students can participate in. The really get excited when they hear or see the technology coming out. It truely motivates them. Other tools to help students learn that I would use in the classroom is advanced organizers and concept maps. As you can clearly see all these tools relate back to constructivism.

Concept Maps & Advanced Organizers

I could use both concept maps and advanced organizers in my classroom. When reading a story to the class we could use a concept map to talk about characters and setting. I could use an advanced organizer to organize our map to write a short paragraph. There are many ways to utalize both tools and these tools really help students get their thoughts in an organized way.

Workshop Nov. 5th

The Online Teaching Toolkit workshop was great! Karen was amazing she gave us so many wonderful tools to use in the classroom. she gave us games, study tools, and so much more. I love spelling City and all the study guide information. She also had a whole section in special ed. I was so excited to see all the great things she had. I really loved the feelings game and the self-esteem game as well. Over all I loved this workshop and will use the materials and tools in my classroom!!!