Personal Learning Theory

My personal learning theory is that students learn best through social interaction. I feel that when students can communicate with each other they are able to share ideas, learn from others ideas, and reflect on their own understanding. These three elements of social interaction are a huge part of the learning process. Social interaction displays the constructivist theory by allowing students to develop their own understanding through the information they obtain by others as well as their personal reflection. It isn't a teacher giving them the information, it is them and other students putting information together and developing their own knowledge.

I use a lot of social interaction in the classroom. In almost every activity that I have in the classroom, students are working with at least one other student. That way they are always communicating with other students and developing ideas together. This year I would like to incorporate more technology into my theory of social interaction. My goal is to set up topics that students can blog with each other about. In math it will be a little bit harder to develop good topics where students can communicate by blog. Some ideas I have can up with is topics that involve vocabulary or steps in a mathematical process. Vocabulary is very important in math. It isn't that the students can just solve a problem, but they must understand what they are finding and why. Also, when students solve math problems they often have very different thinking processes to solve the same problem. It would be very beneficial for students to share the different thought processes that they go through to give students a different perspective.

I feel that social interaction is a very important part of the learning process. I try to use communicate in the classroom as much as possible.