Connectivism and Social Learning in the classroom are two models commonly used by the 21st century educator. Both encourage team or group participation, higher order thinking skills, and collaboration to meet a common goal for a finished product. There are many strategies that support these models such as jigsaw, think-pair-share, literature circles, CPS projects, and more. For the purpose of this assignment, PowerPoint, Voice Thread, and Glogster were used.
Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small groups, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to discuss and explore an understanding of a subject or topic. The group members for this assignment were multi-leveled grouped. Each group had an even number of high, medium, and low students. In addition to the grouping techniques, each member of the group were responsible, not only for learning what is taught, but also, for helping each other learn. Students assessed each other through a rubric and they were required to include positive attributes to the project. Students worked through the assignment until all group members successfully understood and completed the task and concept.
According to Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, and Malenoski, technology can play a unique and vital role in cooperative learning by facilitating group collaboration, providing structure for group tasks, and allowing members of groups to communicate (2007). Thus, using technologies such as power point and then embedding this with voice thread, students were given the opportunity to create a group project and make a virtual field trip, with their voices embedded into the project. Students were able to share their Ecosystems with other classrooms by publishing the Voice Threads on teacher web pages. Some students did not have parental approval to publish to the internet; therefore, the Voice Threads were not made public.
Reflection on Implementation
Dr. Michael Orey states that constructivism is a theory of knowledge derived from each individual actively constructing his or her own meaning (Laureate, 2010). For these reasons, I chose PowerPoint and Voice Thread to give students the chance to explore with picture and text. The greatest advantage of using PowerPoint for classroom lessons is that you can modify them and use them over and over again, each time you teach those lessons. Voice Thread allowed students to create a virtual museum, and the students shared these museums with other classrooms. Glogster is another interactive technology tool that allowed students to combine text, pictures, graphics, video, and audio into an interactive online poster. It can be used to create a “glog” which is basically an online poster web page. This Web 2.0 tool's visual, audio, and textual elements help to develop the visual literacy skills needed by 21st century learners.
Several of these technology tools were discussed during the course of this class. As the students used the technologies, I was able to demonstrate a deeper understanding of the subject matter and its real world application. Furthermore, I was able to understand the theoretical foundations of technology used in instruction and learning. For example, PowerPoint was very easy to teach. It was familiar to me and I have taught it many times with the students. On the other hand, Glogster involved more time because it was a new technology and the students wanted to explore. Voice Thread made the lesson come to life by letting the students actually hear themselves during the presentation. As an educator, we spend a lot of time getting written work, but we do not foster a lot of verbal conversation. I believe this is one reason students have difficulty with oral presentations.
Overall, the students were actively engaged in the lesson. The lesson adapted easily to every learning style and helped to encourage student participation. The groups learned to help one another with the various parts of the lesson and collaborate together. After all, variety is the key to helping students foster a love for learning.
