Friday, January 25, 2013
Chapter 1 Reflection
The focus of chapter 1 of the text is laying out the general aspects of partnering. This is an approach that replaces the older lecture style approach to education with more student driven learning methods. The author describes education of students less as trains on a track and more as rockets with open ended trajectories. The key becomes in providing the students with the skills and background they need to progress in their own path. Further the chapter details the individual responsibilities of both teacher and student while also giving some information on peers, administrators, and parents and how they fit in a well executed partnering approach.
Initially, I was put off by identifying the material as inquiry based as opposed to partnering. It was nice about half way through to have it better explained the connections. That made it easier for me to understand the chapter. I have been trying to use more inquiry based approaches in my approach to educational outings and my interactions with other students. It was nice to see that this was not just relabeling another idea and representing as something entirely new.
Another thing that struck me was reference to using a NASA program in the authors university work that then later was used in education by a much younger group. One of my favorite outings in my work utilized a NASA airfoil simulation designed for undergraduates in aerospace engineering. We stream lined it a little and had 3-4th graders using it. We then had them play a game with it, and ‘tested’ their resulting knowledge of wings and how they work by making real airfoils with paper to test in a wind tunnel. It was nice to see something so similar that happened to others and to have the memory brought up again.
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In 3-4th grader NASA experience, did you notice that all the students were engaged and having a good time, even those that originally looked like they wouldn't enjoy it because it was "science" related or something they didn't care about? I think a big thing with partnering is showing students that have a per-determined attitude about certain subject or even learning in general that learning can be made fun. Learning has been packaged in a boring tedious horrible way for so long that no one is excited about it. If we can make anything fun, how much more can we learn?
ReplyDeleteWe had a huge upper hand, when we taught it was a special after school class type thing. We taught it in the computer lab too so pretty much all the kids were excited. We repeated it a little while back with a Sci Girls group and they were pretty engaged too. It is selection bias though, since the class were voluntary and the kids knew they were science oriented. I have not run into much on 'science is lame' kind of kids. mostly they know we will be doing science when we show up, and most kids get excited after the first few activities we do. Ours has been more focused on engendering excitement for science rather than emphasising the lessons though.
DeleteAside from that the kids were excited to use computers for learning. I did notice that pretty much every single student seemed to get the underlying lesson on the shape of airfoils. When they made them for the physical wind tunnel every foil they made was in the right shapes. They also got really into the game we made at the end of the computer use.