Second Life. My initial reaction was not one of excitement. My knowledge of these avatar type settings was one where people would go to do things they shouldn't because using a screen name and image would allow for all kinds of indiscretions without them being caught. I was very wrong. When I first set up my account I was concerned with what I would find and it took me a while to learn to navigate the "world" but once I started to get the hang of it it became apparent what all of the wonderful and good things that could come from this type of learning. I love the idea of being able to chat with someone live that could be thousands of miles away without a horrendous phone bill. I like the chance to have a class made up of people from all over the world in one place at one time all learning and contributing, what amazing barriers this could overcome. My favorite part, though, is the chance to go places and see things with professionals that will never be possible in person in my life time. I would love to go see the Cistene chapel and have someone who understands what all of the artwork represents next to me, looking at the same thing I am looking at, and be able to teach me. So from my office I can go places and learn things that would never be possible otherwise. I know that there are many glitches that need to be worked out and a lot of details but I would love to start using this in my own line of work as soon as I can. I teach about the Old World of Jerusaleum and Rome, what a benefit it would be to have a section of those ancient cities loaded onto my computer and be able to walk through them with my students while I was talking about what happened in those very places. All I would need is my computer and account and a projector and we could all be in that place, seeing the actual prision or church or landmark while discussing it -- no one need wonder what a benefit that would be to my teaching. I' m going to be using this soon, I'm acutally excited about something computer oriented, wow.

M

My ideas of learning have changed over the course of the semester. I now realize that a lot of what I thought was learning was close to correct but very underdeveloped. I now see that a lot of my ideas were close but needed help. I like how all of the theories seem to tie into one another. Each of them is fairly case specific but held together they all show how learning can be done. Each of the theories seems to focus more on the teacher because he or she is the one implementing the idea. I wonder, though, if we need to be careful not to state a learning theory as the way to learn but as another piece of the puzzle that, put all together, will make up learning. The other thing I'm working more on this year is how to mix up the theories so that I use more than one per class and different styles of each per student. The homogeneous classroom is a myth and I need to find ways to implement multiple styles with multiple students. I think I need to utilize my student leaders better.

M