Sunday, December 2, 2007

A reflection for my online class

I'm reaching the end of my online class on the Theory and Foundation of Education. One of our last assignments is a journal entry, so I thought I would post it here. We are given a few sentence starters and must finish those sentences with a paragraph or more about something we learned in class. This is our third go-round with the exercise and I probably have the same answers every time. I'm impressed with how smart my classmates are compared to me. I'm wondering about how it will feel to actually get paid for working, etc. Oh well, I'll give it one last try, and I hope I think of something new to write.

I am most impressed with how much there is to learn about education. We had a course in our MLIS program about learning theory, media and the curriculum. We focused there more strictly on library theorists and scholars, and what they had to say about teaching and learning in the library and on evidence-based practice. With this course we have covered so much more, and I feel that we have only nicked the surface on some very major topics.
I am wondering how long it will take my school's technology department to learn that the Internet is not our enemy, and that we can all learn by watching and creating videos, by listening and creating podcasts, and by reading and creating blogs and wikis. They are true tools of constructivist learning, and it will excite the students to be able to share their creations with more people than their teacher. Commenting and responding to comments about their posts will stretch their learning to higher levels, as they struggle to defend their posts, and contemplate those of their classmates.
I'm happy to have added new understandings about Behaviorism, Cognitivism and Constructivism, and how they are used in schools in general and the library in particular. With the comparison chart being repeated in each group's work, I was able to review and consider it, and to see the distinctions between Cognitivism and Constructivism. I remembered from Human Information Behavior class that Cognitivism saw the brain as a computer, and focused on how new learning materials are processed, just as a CPU processes information, but most of the theorists of the two schools are the same, and it was confusing to me. Working on this latest unit of study, and discussing the three topics separately has helped me understand how knowledge is not unique to the individual in Cognitivism like it is with Constructivism.
How can I tie this knowledge to what I do in my library? I'm always working on new lesson plans and projects for the kids I teach. It takes a long time to work out the plans, but I enjoy creating them myself, rather than finding already created plans on the net because when I create the plans, they can stem directly from the interests and needs of the children and teachers of my school. Today, while I have been working on homework, I am also mentally working on a lesson plan for second graders making puppets. I want them to think of what types of puppets we should have, how they can use them, what books and resources will they need to learn how to make puppets, what materials will they need, etc. There, I had to write that out.