Social Learning

Discussion 5

I have to agree that social learning is what most educators use in their classrooms today to stay abreast of the changes in teaching today. I prefer to have my children doing the teaching because it gives me the opportunity to observe and ensure they are mastering the lesson. I like to use group or projects as much as possible in my classroom because I have realized that children learn best with hands-on activities. Children also learn from their peers working in groups than they do from a lecture.
Today in Science we had a social learning time as children presented their Science Fair Projects. I was amazed how the presenter held the attention of their classmates as they presented their projects. I just sat back and let each student teach the class today. They interacted with one another and were interested in many of the projects. I also enjoyed the question and answer time after each presentation. I would ask a question to trigger the conversation among the presenter and the audience of students.
I think that using technology is very important in the classroom. I do not get the opportunity to use technology as often as I would like to because we are limited to laptop carts. I try to have laptops available in my classroom one or two days a week as we work on Study Island, iStation, or SpellingCity. We use Macs in our school system so we have Garageband available. Garageband has Podcast which is very similar to Virtual Thread. I plan to introduce Podcast to my students in the next few weeks as we work on a project in Social Studies.