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I have been in university for a long while now to become a teacher.  I have had many instructors/professors that have many different teaching styles, I have gone to OCRE, preinternship, and internship; however, there is so much to learn yet.  As my name states teachers are learners!  I have conferenced and discussed teaching styles with many different grade teachers and they all have different ways of teaching. Depending on the age (generational gap) and programs/conferences they have gone to, teachers will favor one type of style to another.  Thus, because this is a technology class I will focus on this area of study!

                           

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The older the teacher you talk to, the more traditional the teaching they will implement in their classrooms.  I am not insisting that a 50 year old teacher will not implement technology (smart boards, computers, etc) into a classroom because they are not knowledgeable; I am basing my opinion on the different teachers I have been able to talk to or the teachers I have had in school.  It is like teaching old dog new tricks… its hard to do but with the right programs and tools it is interesting to see that at any age they can learn. 

This saying can lead into my personal learning.  As said I have been taught many ways of teaching and have implemented such things as adaptive dimension, risky units (creating and teaching an aboriginal unit to grade 2 children), and used the different teaching styles (audio, visual, and kinesthetic) within my teachings.  To get to this stage though I had to learn!  And boy did I learn!  When I taught my aboriginal unit to grade 2 children (which is a grade 4 unit study in social within the evergreen curriculum), I had many challenges.  For a 20 year old Caucasian student that was entering preinternship year with not a clue about aboriginal culture I had to learn how to teach about this ethnicity!  In university, I was given many packages and information (through my instructors and guest speakers) on how to teach aboriginals.  Yet, I felt like I did not have a clue what to do!  Thus the internet was one of my best friends!  I would google different sites and find activities, pictures, programs, and information that was beneficial in my teachings as well as learning.  I feel more confident to know that through forums and things that there are other teachers out there that felt just as uncomfortable as I had!

Personal learning is very effective with me.  I love to learn about anything that interests me.  Sometimes the questions I may ask sound juvenile or a head scratcher of a “stupid question” but I was told there is no such thing as stupid questions because that is the only way to learn.  My aboriginal unit that I describe above was such a learning experience that I would love to continue learning about and maybe one day find a teaching job up north teaching aboriginals. 

Learning is much harder than teaching!  In order to be a teacher you have to learn about the topics and units you are going to implement in your classroom to become knowledgeable.  For technology sakes, a teacher must become comfortable with this or else it will be hard to teach it.  I have many friends that know things about computers that I would never imagine and people on my delicious or other bookmarking accounts; these are the type of people that become part of my personal network on helping me figure out programs and different websites that would be beneficial in my learning. 

I learn best independently!  If I am forced to learn about something that does not interest me I tend to struggle in that area; however, if I am interested in something then I love to find new ways to learn about it whether it is through questioning, internet or other media forms, or through instructing.  Dependent learning is also good in such ways as “putting two heads together is better than one” theory, social networking online with such things as blogs or accounts like delicious, and getting feedback through other colleagues and educators.

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