Activity 7 Blog

How can I facilitate a student-centered classroom?

Facilitating a student centered classroom is about building all the steps of creating a successful lesson plan and subsequent assessments, rubrics, checklists and support materials with the aid of student input. again as I have stated in past blogs, formulating plans with student input is helping to encourage student success. Students will be more successful if they have an active role in their learning, planning and with the forms of assessment. Students will also feel empowered, which further encourages and invites success. The instructor also benefits by having student input through the advantage of many sets of opinions and thoughts regarding a lesson plan and the on-going learning. I personally have always said and believed that I too learn from my students. When I was a private teacher, I was always impressed by who the new learning for my would be coming from. Often times being the youngest or the oldest student which sometimes took me by surprise.

How can I use technology to support my instructional practice?

I feel that this class has opened my eyes to many new ways that technology can be used at all stages of the planning for student learning. Technology enables more communication, allows for access to more materials, information and ideas for planning of student learning. Technology also increases the level of student success, allowing the student to be more "hands on" approach, while also allowing the student to have access to far more information. Teacher student communication can be increased on all levels through blogs, wikis, skype and other online tools allow the classroom to be extended to beyond the "regular" school. I also feel that students take charge of their own learning through the use of technology. Students today are so technologically advanced that it seems only natural that the use of technology in instructional planning and practice by the teacher would enable greater student success while raising aspirations.