Technology as Applied to Meaningful Learning

Meaningful learning is obviously an essential part of education, consisting of the elements: Active, Constructive, Intentional, Authentic, and Cooperative. Constructive means that learning builds on prior knowledge, Intentional means that the student is actively seeking new knowledge, Active means the student is interacting and actually "doing the learning." Authentic means that the knowledge is genuine and helpful to the students, and Cooperative means students and teachers work together to achieve the end result. Meaningful learning has always been an important part of teachers' jobs, and now teachers can enforce it even more so using technology.

It was difficult for me to find student-created examples of social studies wikis, podcast, and blogs, but there was an abundance of teacher-created ones. Clearly, a lot of teachers are taking advantage of the great technological world out there! Technology is the future, and what better way to ensure that tomorrow's citizens utilize it than to use it in classrooms?? The blog I found was Ms. McCay's Social Studies Blog (http://mccleskeyms.typepad.com/mccoy/). She provided lots of interesting links that pertain to the class. This engages the Active aspect of meaningful learning. Similarly, the students' homework is posted on the blog, so they have to look at it in order to succeed in the classroom. This authenticates the blog for the students as well. The students know that when they view their social studies teacher's blog, they are there to gain information for the class (Intentional Learning). Ms. McCay (the teacher) and the students who view her blog work together to create a great atmosphere for learning social studies. Parents can also view the blog, helping the parent/teacher connection. This blog was an excellent place for the teacher to post social studies resources for her class. Rather than printing out a bunch of maps and primary source documents, Ms. McCay can put them directly on her blog. Students are more likely to log onto a computer and go to a blog than read out of a boring textbook.

The wiki I chose was an Eighth Grade US History wiki (http://woodward8.wikispaces.com/). I really, really liked this wiki. The graphics were amazing, which is good for catching students' eyes and making them interested. Something that really stood out to me was the flashing images of all the US presidents. This wiki was really helpful for the students because it had links to chapter vocabulary words and important dates. Students are much more likely to use this wiki than their textbook, and hopefully, students will be more interested in doing their homework. This wiki is Cooperative because it is a collaborative effort from the teachers and the students. It is Active because the students have to seek out what they want to learn by clicking on the links, thus also making it Intentional. If students feel that they have a part in creating something for their class, they are going to take ownership of it and hopefully put more effort into it. I really wish that my class had a wiki when I was in school because it seems like a really good idea. This wiki was Constructive in that you would have to have knowledge of the subject (US history) to be able to use the wiki.

Mr. Carmichael's Social Studies podcast (http://rustycar.podomatic.com/) had lots of great images concerning American history and government. This seemed to be the most technologically advanced of the three sites that I have found, so I think students would really enjoy it. I think podcasts are a really good idea because if a student does not understand something, they can look on the podcast and not feel embarrassed about it. Podcasts utilize all of the meaningful learning aspects.

Meaningful learning is much more important than rote memorization of facts. Education in the past dealt more with memorization, and not full understanding. Memorization does not equal learning; blogs, wikis and podcasts all help to contribute to meaningful learning.

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~rallrich/learn/mean.html

(Our readings helped me realize the origins of this URL....I know the tilde means that this is a personal page, and must be investigated further! However, the information matched up with http://prezi.com/s_e-eckiot4p/).