Learning Style

My learning style after reviewing the session 5 post on learning styles would be a good mix of most of the styles. I am a very good verbal learner who can usually listen and then regurgitate information quickly, and remember it quite well with very little review. I do like learning sequentially overall so I can keep information organized in my head better and use groupings to make connections, somewhat similar to the global learning style. I am a decent active and visual learned, but tend to be more of a thinker than and actor when it comes to learning, which is why I enjoy classes in humanities, history, and political theory over those in math and sciences. I find that I also excel, when it comes to multiple intelligences, in interpersonal intelligence which comes from my constant lifelong interactions between people of different cultures and backgrounds. I also find that my verbal/linguistic intelligence level is quite high as I have very little trouble with writing, public speaking, or generally expressing my opinions and thoughts verbally. I don't consider myself a poet or a wordsmith of any type, but I generally grasp verbal and linguistic skills.

When it comes to teaching, I have very little experience in the classroom so when I do start my first job this coming August I hope to use a combination of all types of teaching styles to benefit every type of child in the classroom. Everyone learns differently, and creating a curriculum where every type of student can succeed and excel at some aspect is very important in an elementary school environment.

I thought this course worked well in relation to my learning style. I am good at reading, following instructions, and exploring things like twitter and RSS Readers on my own. This class gave you a good amount of instruction and freedom to chose one of many types of software and applications that most appeal to us in our current work situations.

As for focus, I think that in a classroom teachers should always focus on implementing many types of teaching methods so as to best reward all types of learning styles of the student in the classroom. Lessons should switch up there focus between group and alone work, lecture and active learning, and writing and artistic representation. It is impossible, like the assignment says, to incorporate every kind of teaching method to stiumulate every type of learning style in every lesson, but switching up teaching methods from lesson to lesson will have a similar effect without the chaos that would definitely occur if too many teaching styles were applied.

Creative Commons

Creative commons is a great resource for finding free content to use any way you please. Many different types of licenses are available for images depending on the persons specific way they would want it to be used. Commercial and personal licenses are available, but it seems to me that nearly all of them could be used in an educational setting. With creative commons, you can also license audio, video, and even programming code. Another feature of licensing is that a person can allow the modification or no modification to their work. Here is the a photo that I found on flicker.

This picture has a non-commercial, non-derives license, meaning that it can't be used for commercial purposes or edited in any way. The citation for the image would be like this:

Klaus Henkel, DSC_6985.jpg, February 11, 2012 via flicker, Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-NonDerivs


Creative commons images, audio, video, or programming code could be used for so many things at an educational institution. Some ideas could be using images in a class learning adobe photoshop for image editing, building a powerpoint presentation using creative commons images, or just showing students images in relation to the class curriculum. The sky is really the limit when it comes to doing things with the creative commons. It also can teach students valuable lessons in citing sources and not plagiarizing work, something that needs to be consistently worked on throughout the education process.


I uploaded an image to flickr and shared it under a non commercial non derivs license. The link to that image is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/76954815@N05/6902407849/in/photostream

 

RSS Page Refelection: Google Reader

I choose Google Reader as my RSS Reader because I consistently use many google features (google docs, gmail, google calendar) and I think it is more organized to keep an added RSS reading feature under the same account. Google Reader is very simple to use. I added the four necessary feeds, and used google to find four more sites to add, 3 of which are blogs and one of which is a web page. Here are some screen shots of what my RSS Page looks like:

I found the features very simple to use. Adding feeds could either be done through the original page or blog, or else through the Readers Add Feed option, where a url was put in and the Reader automatically found the feed and added it to your reading list.

I posted a comment on a blog that I found called The Thinking Stick, a blog written by an overseas educator that features great original content and links to happenings in the educational technology world as well as ideas for educators. It relates very well with my new position teaching overseas in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, as an elementary computers teacher. I posted a comment on this story:  It is a plan for a 1 to 1 student to laptop program in any school district, and I liked his ideas. Here is a screenshot of my post on that blog:

The blog post emphasized the usage of laptops for students in grades 6-12. Each student would be given a macbook pro that would be used at school and at home to do schoolwork, explore, etc. I liked the fact that he emphasized an open interface (no real limiting software to what can be installed) so the students had options to how they wanted to go about doing a project and were not limited to a small number of programs. This increases technology skills and outside the box thinking, something that is important for today's children.

RSS feeds are great because they are constantly updating, with new information being received by the hour that is often extremely pertinent to education and teaching with technology in our case. Every time I log in I have 10-20 posts that I find would benefit me as a future computers teacher, and I stop and read about them. I find that no matter what days I use Google Reader, I am still getting new updates. I am following around 10 feeds, so if 1 blog (which I notice usually don't update as often as websites) doesn't have a new post that day, I just go to another one that does.

I have been reading many posts and have already amassed a few ideas for when I start teaching next year. 2 blogs that I am following, 2 Cents Worth and the previously mentioned The Walking Stick, have great ideas with an international education background, something that will apply to me at my new job. I follow another RSS feed dealing with P.E, because I will be teaching a section or 2 of P.E every week. The site is found here, and is a great resource to find drills, activities, and games in relation to teaching P.E. I feel as though I have just touched the surface of all of the great resources out there that could help and make me a better educator.

I will use RSS feeds with Google Reader during my teaching to continue to read and learn to make myself a better educator by maintaining my own learning while teaching. Keeping up with technology is difficult because of the speed at which it moves, but having a tool like RSS can keep you in the loop and up to date on the most important technological advances in specific and applicable areas. Personally, I have been using Firefox's live RSS feeds to find the latest information on my favorite sports teams, world news developments, and travel tips. I find that it is a great resources for personal enjoyment as well as professional development.