Personal Learning Reflection

Tai Kimmerly

Carolyn McCarthy and Dr. Sandra Plair

CEP-810 Teaching for Understanding with Computers

06/30/11

Personal Learning Reflection

In my personal learning reflection, I had two teaching goals. They were incorporating technology to aide engagement and assessment and to become a technology source for the other teachers within my building. Throughout this course, I have discovered several ways of using different forms of technology for assessment. For instance, VoiceThread can be used to share and comment on student compositions. I have also recently learned to use Jing, which I can use to make tutorials for any programs that my colleagues and I might need to use. Before this class, I was not aware that these programs existed.

In regards to becoming a technology source for other teachers in my building, I have started conversations with my mentor, school media specialist, and several other colleagues about different programs that I have learned about in this class. My mentor, a learning specialist, plans to use VoiceThread to model good reading to her students. Our media specialist is excited to start using Google Docs as a publishing venue for students. Another music teacher and I plan to start sharing student compositions this fall. In addition to becoming a technology source for teachers in my school I have also started to share what I have learned with friends and colleagues outside of work.

As far as my skills with technology are concerned, I set out to improve my abilities with mp3 player. In addition to spending time uploading music and getting to know my mp3 player, I finally received my invitation to Music Beta, Google’s new music cloud service. I currently have a similar Amazon account, but the Google version appears to hold more music. I learned about these programs through my Google Reader page.

The assignment that best represents good teaching and technology is the SIG project. This assignment not only made me consider technologies that I could use in my classroom, but also helped me to think about how I would teach similar lessons or use similar projects with my own students in the future. Along with classmates I experienced working with group members in an online setting so that I can help my own students do the same thing in the future.

My new goals are on a broader scale. I would like to actively search out new technology opportunities on a regular basis. Thanks to my new RSS feed, twitter, and various other accounts that I have started in the past few weeks, I have access to more information about technology and music than I knew was available. I would also like to continue to find more methods of incorporating technology into assessment. I would like to be the person who helps others to discover new ways to reach their students through the use of technology.

VoiceThread Presentation

Learning Styles

In my experience, strategies that involved problem solving and applying knowledge to physical problems work best for my learning. Lecture based teaching was never very effective for me, because I have a tendency to space out, no matter how hard I concentrate. This point was proven yet again today in church when I sat through three catholic masses and have very little recollection of what the sermons were about. However, when combined with something physical, like taking notes, my concentration improves exponentially. Things that also help me are drawing, doodling, or simply playing with something in my hands. I think a lot of times, people think of the things that help learners like me concentrate as distractions and require them to stop. What is the result? By the end of the lecture, or sermon, I am kicking myself because somewhere along the line, I started thinking about flying airplanes. I am not joking.

Also, being able to apply what I have learned as soon as possible after learning it is crucial. Even for this class, I occasionally read a lecture and then wait a couple of days to do the assignment. By then, I have to re-read everything because I didn't have anything to connect the information to in my head, and it didn't stick. While we can't teach every lesson according the all learning styles, we can try to include as many as possible and vary them. Even if a student is excellent in a lecture setting and can remember everything spoken out loud, it couldn't hurt to take notes, or apply the information soon after the lecture to a project. It is not redundant, but reinforcement. Even if a given learning style isn't the best for a student, that doesn't mean it can't help in some way.

Creative Commons Lab

Photo Attribution:
Original Image: "The Sign"
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3421/3192472818_1c7446454b.jpg
By: Ethan Hein
Released under an Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) License

I frequently use images in my curriculum, whether they are computer generated, photographs, or things I have to create. For instance, notation is very visual. It has to either be created by me, downloaded, or displayed from an image someone else has created. There are also visual representations of music that I create myself, by hand and on the computer, so that students may connect what they are hearing to something visual. For example, the image I have embedded and linked to my Picasa account below, is an image for the melody of a song called "Five Kites." I use it and many visuals like it every year with kindergarten and other grade levels. While the image is quite simple and took me all of thirty seconds to make, it is an incredibly powerful visual tool.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/tXN4lT77R-IEKmIpY4o5CH0lzNkzZl-GeQQp7IVjXJc?feat=directlink

Also in my Picasa account is my drumming photo from my blog. It was automatically put there because both Blogger and Picasa are google accounts, but I don't know why it added twenty copies of the photo.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/v7NdSAMIhLeCNi2cMAEjHqyVSjbH5KayKq8g1fPjRh8?feat=directlink

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)