Social Learning and Technology

I have always believed that the best way a child truly learns is through "doing". As a first grade teacher, I have gone to great lengths to provide my students with numerous opportunities to actively engage in the learning process. I allow for cooperative learning groups and present problem-based activities as much as possible. The problem that I have with this, however, is simply a lack of time as well as pressure from my administration to raise test scores. I do the best that I can to include projects that pertain to my students' "real lives" as well encourage more critical thinking, but I have to admit that when test scores come out I get a little nervous. Did my students do as well as the others? Did I spend enough time on the "basics"? At times I feel as though I'm walking a very long tightrope.

Tonight, before doing "my homework", I was helping my son with a book report on Wayne Gretzky. (My son thinks he should be President!) As we were printing up pictures and information from various websites and glueing them to a poster board, I was thinking about how amazing using a VoiceThread would be instead of a written (boring) report. When my son saw me doing mine, he was excited to do his own. (Keep in mind, this is a ten year old boy who hates homework!) He wanted to learn how to do everything I was doing. My mind shifted to the possibility of him showing small groups of students from his class how to do this and them deciding together on a project topic. What great peer tutoring! I am also going to use this in my first grade class by taking pictures of my students acting out a story and then having them tell the story on a VoiceThread. They will absolutely love this! In addition to this, I have just recently started my own class website where projects such as this and blogging are available to my students. Although my steps are small, I feel extremely excited to implement as much of the social learning practices along with technology as possible. Now, if they would just stop pressuring me about test scores.....

Amy Arsenault

My VoiceThread

Here is my VoiceThread URL:

http://voicethread.com/share/657467/

It is a look at the problem of bullying that is occuring in our schools today.