Week 5

It is difficult to narrow down everything that I have learned over the past 5 weeks because there has been so much new information. I am surprised by how much I have learned in such a short period of time, and overall I really enjoyed this class. I was intimidated at first, because I am not exactly tech savvy, but I feel much more confident in my skills now, and I look forward to being able to (hopefully) use technology in my own classroom one day. 

The first thing I learned in this class was cognitive theory. This was pretty much all new information for me because I only took one psychology class in college and it was quite a long time ago. I learned about constructivism and student-centered learning, which will be very helpful once I get into the classroom. These theories reminded me of my time in undergrad, because at Cal Poly the motto is "Learn by Doing." I think Piaget and Vygotsky would approve. 

I also learned about how technology is best implemented in the classroom. Technology works well in constructivist classrooms, because it facilitates more hands-on learning for students. It takes the focus off the teacher, and places it on the students. However, many schools are not doing this. Few students these days are actually learning the technical skills that are essential in the 21st century. Our job as future educators is to make sure that we teach these 21st century skills to the best of our ability.

My favorite part of this class was seeing other peoples projects. I think a lot of them turned out really well, and they would be fun to actually implement in the classroom one day. My favorite one was the Civil War video; I thought it looked like a lot of fun.