521 Week 4 Blog

This past week I have been thinking more about self directed learning and how I can incorporate it into my classroom. I guess as I have thought more about the topic I have discovered that it is really an important concept in education. In fact it really should be the goal of education to be self directed. What good does it really do if as soon as our students walk out the door they stop learning and have no further interest. As you know now from reading my blogs I am a special education teacher. As in the past when I began reflecting on self directed learning I began to feel frustrated as to how I could possibly incorporate this into my classroom. After considerable reflection I came back to a core belief of mine. I believe that all children have interests. As a educator it is my job to look a little deeper and figure out what interests and motivates my students and begin to use them to my advantage. Most of the students I have don't have very much success in the regular education environment. However, this is not to say they can't be successful in school or that they have no interests. I am in the unique spot where I am able to get to know my students better and can use my knowledge about them as individuals to help better my classroom teaching strategies as they relate to self directed learning. It is the goal of our self advocacy classes that our students know themselves and in the process discover where their passions and interests lie. So, it is my hope to better the process of self directed learning and attempt to implement it to a greater extent in my Self Advocacy next year.

521 Week 3 Blog

So far I have had to rethink some of my thoughts on student centered learning. My first inclination was to assume that it would be too difficult to attempt with my students. It is very challenging to attempt students centered learning with regular education students let alone special education students. However, this is not to say that this can't be done. It is possible to successfully implement student centered learning it just has to be extremely well laid out and organized for my student population. I also need to be OK with trying multiple student centered learning projects and have the expectations that they may not work out perfectly each time I attempt them. I think that I need to attempt some of these tasks in very small intervals. That is to say I will try out these ideas gradually and build on some of the successes. I feel the most challenging aspect of the student centered learning concept will by the prior knowledge that my students have. Therefore it makes sense for me to tinker with some basic student centered projects later in the year once I have a grasp of where my students are preforming. It is my hope that I can take some small steps and work towards a more student centered learning environment in my classroom.

521 Week 2 Blog

I have several digital divide issues facing my classroom. First, is the fact that the school I teach at blocks many sites including WIKI pages. I understand the reason that many sites are blocked in my district. While I am sure that I could follow the proper channels and get it unblocked it still represents an additional obstacle that must be dealt with every time I create a wiki page or use another site that is blocked. However, I feel that by possibility joining the technology committee I can bring to lite the advantages a wiki could bring. This is something I am looking into for next year. Google Docs is another example of a site that is blocked in my district that would be very helpful in creating our special education classes as well as our finals schedules for our students. I am currently working with the special education department head to see if we can get google docs started for next year. This seems promising as it would be limited to staff. We are using Moodle as a district so that is exciting and this class is a good opportunity for me to get a head start on Moodle.
Beside the challenges of blocked site comes the challenges of Internet supervision for my special education students. This is a challenge that I look forward to assisting them with in their responsible internet searches. So often my students will go to google do a search and end up citing wikipedia. They will site that as their only source. So I look forward to using the internet with them and helping them to improve their searches and to come out with credible web sites.