Bringing Theory, Instruction, and Technology Together

Homework and Practice Instructional Strategy

“It takes 24 practice sessions with a skill in order to achieve 80 – percent competency” (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007). Knowing this it is important that students receive feedback quickly to keep errors to a minimum and the use of technology can make that happen. There are many websites that provide practice especially in math that engage the student. I actually implement two programs currently with some of my students. One program identifies student’s age level within the different standards and then provides guided instruction and practice for them at that level. If an error is made it is identified and corrected immediately. The other program is a drill program working on fact fluency. For this area I believe connectivism best applies as student learning is being enhanced by technology and the diversity of the networking ability that allows students to readapt patterns in their prior knowledge (Orey, 2001). There is Social Constructivism involved as there is still interaction between the teacher and other students when additional help is needed. These two learning theories are dovetailed together within my homework and practice policies. Other technology that I use with my students for homework and practice is the use of the curriculum website with online book, practice quizzes, and online tutorials. I can set up an online quiz for the students and they get immediate feedback plus it emails me the results so I know in the morning what I need to review in class that day. I tried setting up a blog this year for discussion and to answer questions at night but it has been slow to take off with the students.

Notetaking and Summarizing Instructional Strategy

Teaching students how to take notes and summarizing is important in all subject areas. It may look differently based on the subjects which means they need to be taught different strategies. Technology has made this very easy with programs like inspiration, word, power point, wiki’s, blogs even excel to name a few. Teaching students how to use graphic organizers such as inspiration or any of the fore mentioned programs definitely falls within social constructivism. The students are actively involved in creating an external artifact that can be shared with others (Laureate Education, 2009). One way I would implement these strategies with my students is for example using power point to have the students collaborate on the procedures of solving a math problems such as finding volume of different 3- dimensional prisms. In the fall, I would like to develop a class wiki for my regular math class next year consisting of class notes for the day, tips and other ideas the students have that will help them when they are outside of class.

References

Laureate Education, I. P. (2009). Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology. Baltimore: Author.

Orey, M. (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Denver: Mid=continent Research for Education and Learning.