Visual learners learn and utilize their knowledge through visual means. They benefit greatly when teachers use visual aids, such as graphic organizers, maps, videos, pictures, diagrams, and other types of aids. Visual learners can create detailed images in their mind when they read and learn new information. Teachers need to be aware of what type of learners they have in class so that they can differentiate their teaching. In order to accommodate the different learning styles, teachers should present the information in several ways, including visual aids. When I become a teacher, I plan to use a variety of visuals, because I am a visual learner and know how important these are. I also hope to have a laptop or tablet for every student so that they will be able to create their own visual aids, or whatever they need to help them learn. Richard Byrne has a website, Free Technology for Teachers, filled with a variety of free technology sites for teachers. Here teachers can find a number of helpful resources for making useful visual aids. Below are a few examples of visual aids and graphics that will be helpful in any classroom. Tagxedo I made from Pennsylvania State University's Visual Learner information page. Tagxedo can help students see what information is most important or comes up repeatedly, since those words are expressed lager and bolder. Here is a graphic organizer I made usingbubbl.us. Students could organize their notes, breakdown papers, brainstorm, or use this site in a number of ways. Maps are also a valuable asset to use when teaching visual learners. This is especially true in history classrooms, which I plan to teach in the future.
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The Constructivist Approach allows students to become independent learners and critical thinkers. Teachers step out of the traditional roles of lecturers and become more involved in the learning process. Students work together, along with the teacher, to solve problems, investigate topics, and create projects to share their new-found knowledge. I will use this approach when I become a teacher. Traditionally, Social Studies courses have utilized traditional lecture style teaching practices. This is one reason why kids have grown to dislike these classes. They are viewed as boring and unnecessary, but this does not need to be the case. In my Social Studies classroom, students will take an active role in earning. They will investigate various aspects of history through the methods of the Constructivist Approach. I want my students to be interested in history and find the relevance by making connections to the present. They will form sound opinions on different historical events based on their research. My students will become critical thinkers, a skill they will need to succeed in the future. To learn about the constructivist approach, my partner, Michelle Nolte, and I researched each aspect of this teaching method and created a presentation through Google Drive. We then added a lecture to the presentation through Screencast-O-Matic. The Screencast presentation is below and the regular presentation is below that. Screencast-O-Matic is a free program which allows you to add video or voice to a presentation. It then allows you to upload it to the site, and share it to other locations as well. This will be helpful when I begin my teaching career. I plan on having a webpage so that my students have a place to access any information I present in class, or that I feel is relevant to the subjects I am teaching at the time. Screencast-O-Matic will allow me to upload presentations and lectures to my webpage so that I will not need to waste time in class going over this information. I think that class time should be reserved more for the research and collaboration instead of the traditional lecture and note-taking. If my students need to review all or part of a presentation it will be available to them at all times. Before once a lecture was presented, it was over. If you forgot to write something down, or the teacher was talking too quickly, then that information was gone. Now students are able to pause and rewatch the lecture over and over until they got all they need. I think this would be a wonderful asset to any class. Here is the actual presentation so that you can go back to watch the videos and review on your own. Standards and More Standards Knowing the standards will help me become a better teacher. I want to integrate a variety of technologies into my lessons, and knowing the technology standards for teachers and students will help me do this. The Ohio standards seem to be more detailed and cover a wider area of technology use and how it impacts the world, but the ISTE standards are also helpful by giving more concise standards on which that teachers and students should focus. The administrator standards were interesting because I am just now seeing these come into use in the high school where I work. Principals seem to be the slowest on adjusting to this new technological world, but at least they are starting to come on boards. In the future I would like to take some professional development to help me further understand these standards and how to more efficiently integrate them into my future classroom. As a history teacher, I want to show my kids what an important impact technology has had on the world, but that we need to be careful. While the Luddites may have been over reacting in a number of ways, they still had many valid points about the dangers of technology. I want to use technology in many ways in my class, but I want it to have a purpose, and the standards help to give me that purpose. Ethics and Copyright Netiquette and copyright laws are two major parts of technology ethics. I have learned that if you know how to act in a proper and responsible way in your every day life, than that is the way you should behave when you are using technology. The number one thing that stood out for me when I was reading about netiquette, beside the cool new term, is that you need to remember that you are interacting with other people when you are online. We need to teach this to kids. It is way to easy to bully someone you are not face to face with. Cyber bullying has become a huge problem and we need to address this with our students. We also need to teach them that they must represent themselves well online at all times. It is too easy to post things and forget they are there. Teachers and students need to be careful with the words and images that will be forever associated with their names. Copyright laws are also something that I need to be more aware of when I am a teacher. It is very easy to find and use things from the internet. I need to be more aware and give others credit for their work. I also need to make my students aware of this as well. |