Course Description:
Strategies for integrating technology into the teaching and learning process, with a focus on enhancing how students think rather than what they think. Special attention given to supporting higher order thinking and problem solving with technology.
Reflection
In this course, I learned about the five characteristics of meaningful learning and the traits of these five characteristics. In order for students to be engaged in meaningful learning, students should be involved in active learning, constructive learning, authentic learning and cooperative learning. The more of these characteristics that an activity involves, the more meaningful learning will take place. In addition to learning about the characteristics of learning, we also took a look at how technology can improve our practices to make learning more meaningful for our students.
Through this course, I analyzed some of the activities that I currently do with my students in order to find the strengths and weaknesses of what I currently do with my students. Through self-assessment, I realized I could use technology to engage students in more authentic learning by using Edmodo more often with our native French-speaking pen-pals. Constructive learning was another characteristic that I learned was lacking in many of the activities that I do with my students. I now plan units of study to include more constructive learning activities with my students.
One of the most beneficial activities that we did in the class was to create a Concept Map. Our concept map was create to show the relationship of technology, instruction and learning. I found the Concept Map exercise to be beneficial for analyzing my understanding, and likewise, I have adapted the Concept Map idea for use in my classroom. I have my own students to a Concept Map assignment to demonstrate their understanding of sentence structure in the French language. For this activity, students work with cooperative learning groups and post their final product on our class Edmodo page. Students have used a variety of Internet and software applications to create visually appealing representations of their understanding. In the end, our Concept Map activity engages students in all of the characteristics or meaningful learning.