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Learning Style Reflection

According to the test, my learning style is pretty balanced. I'v taken the survey a few times and it always comes out fairly balanced, but in slight favor of Kinestetic and visual. I'd say this reflects my learning style fairly accurately. The best way I learn is by hands on experience, but it helps if I watch someone first, then jump in and figure it out step by step. The test said that the auditory learning style is my worst category, which makes sense because listening to lectures is my least favorite way to learn. I have been forced to learn how to take notes when listening to lectures throughout college, so I am able to absorb lectures relatively successfully. I can change the way I learn and study depending on the content, which lends to the balanced results of the learning style test. I like to study by myself in a quiet room, but I also benefit from study groups because I follow the philosophy that more heads are better than one. The balanced results show that I can be a adaptive learner, but I do have preferences on how I learn and retain the most information. Sometimes you can become a better listener if you make an effort to participate in the class discussions on the topic - then you'll be more likely to remember the material that was discussed in the lecture.

Assistive technology reflection

I learned that assistive technology is growing at almost the same rate as all other technologies. I also learned that there is a wide range of assistive technologies for physically disabled people as well as the learning disabled. One of the products that interested and surprised me the most was the wheel chair the girl had in the video. She was able to tap two switches placed next to her head to control almost everything she needed to do in daily life as well as for studying. It is amazing to me that assistive technology is becoming advanced enough to allow someone who can move only his eyebrows to control the technologies helping him live. Assistive technology provides students with diverse learning needs the chance to excel in a normal classroom setting and get the proper education they need. As I said in class, in the past, students with major physical disabilities (such as CP) would never have had the opportunity to participate in general education and rarely did the public understand that those individuals may have been of above-average intelligence because they could not speak or write. Now, however, as you pointed out, students can use the slightest movement to maneuver or communicate - thank heavens for technological advancements in this area!

I have some experience with people I know using assistive technology. A long time family friend had heart problems her entire life and was able to live years past what doctors had anticipated with an artificial heart. Another, more recent experience I had was with a friend of mine who was watching a child who used a special wheel chair that he controlled with a joystick. I am unable to recall exactly what his disability is, but he was not able to talk or control much of his movements. The technology in his chair is not as advanced as what is available today, and he still required the assistance of other people for almost all daily activities. As someone who will soon be joining the teaching profession I will take with me the knowledge that all students learn differently, those with special needs require extra help. Thanks to this assignment, I know where to look for resources to help provide my students with the help they need to succeed in school and life.

Virtual Field Trip Reaction

After taking the virtual field trip, I thought it was a great interactive way to learn more about a particular subject. Virtual field trips are a good substitute for being able to take an actual field trip. The fact that they are interactive is a good way to get the students involved in the learning that is taking place by doing the virtual field trip in the first place. It becomes almost like an online game that they can play. As an English teacher I would use a virtual field trip as an introduction to give the students background knowledge on a certain topic that a novel is about. For instance a virtual field trip about a certain time period that is the setting for a novel we would be about to read. Gaining the background knowledge through a virtual field trip would allow the students to retain more information from the book, as well as understand the setting and events of the book better.

CAST Reflection

My overall impression of the cast website is that it’s easy to navigate and it’s well designed. The website also has a lot of useful information on UDL including some great model lessons for any grade level that utilize UDL.

After poking around the website and familiarizing myself with it, I took the individual learning styles test, and found out that my best way to learn is visual kinesthetic. This reinforces what I already knew about myself. A more surprising find was that the results of the test were actually fairly balanced between all categories, and kinesthetic won by a small margin. I enjoyed finding this out because thanks to some of the study suggestions I learned a few ways I can improve on my learning in classes that are mostly lecture. For instance, I could use a tape recorder with the professors permission, or instead of taking copious notes, pick out what I think is most important in the lecture and write down important words or sentences that help with recollection of the main point of the lecture.

When I was finished with the learning styles test I moved on and looked at the electronic version of //Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age//. In this book there is information on how the brain works, and how best to prepare the students’ brains for learning. For example, the fact that gaining student interest in a topic is the best way to get them to want to learn. In my classes in the future, I will take the advice of this book and try to relate material to the students in a way that interests them.

When I returned to the homepage after looking through the online book, I saw a couple of activities that help you get to know yourself in terms of UDL. There was also an activity to illustrate how the three brain networks work and interact. Even though these activities didn’t exactly help me gain new insight on myself, I can see how they would be useful to others. I consider myself to be a fairly self aware person. I imagine the activities go differently with other people, which is exactly the point UDL makes. Differentiated instruction is important to the learning of every student. Every student is different, learns different, and reacts different, therefore there is no one way to teach all students. While I have been able to look at a lot of the CAST website I would like to spend more time on it to completely familiarize myself with all the resources and information it has to offer as I continue in my study and practice of the teaching profession. That's why I suggest that students bookmark the site to refer to in the future. In your other classes, you may find the need to use the CAST resources to help you with lesson planning.

[|Link to Learning Theory Glog]

This is the [|LINK] to my Digital Story file.

** Final Reflection: ** Well, I ask about the use of technology because I think it is becoming more and more of an important part of the educational process in schools. Technology keeps getting more and more advanced as time moves forward. Some students are exposed to a lot of the new technology outside of the classroom. For those students, using technology in the classroom is a way to gain their interest in the material they are learning. I think not using new technology in the classroom would set those students back in their development because regular lessons wouldn’t interest them as much; therefore they would not try as hard. On the other hand, there are a lot of students who do not have access to new technologies outside of the classroom. If they are not exposed to new technology in schools, they will fall behind the times, and when it comes time for them to graduate and get a job, they won’t have the necessary skills in technology to be considered for well paying jobs. Using and integrating technology into lessons will also have the same effect of gaining student interest with these students as well. In my opinion, having up-to-date technology in the classroom is only the first step in providing a quality education for students. The next step is to use that technology and integrate it into lesson plans as well as the curriculum so that students have a solid background in using up-to-date technology when they are preparing for graduation and searching for a job.
 * I don’t think my thoughts have changed much from the beginning of the semester until now. I think now I have a better picture in my head of just how important the use of technology is for the future of education and instruction. Before, the use of technology for instruction was more of just the idea of gaining student interest to make instruction more effective for learning. That is still the case, however, now I think it is a bit bigger than that. If we don’t start using more technology in the classroom it could affect the overall quality of education for students as well as their futures as members of the workforce. **