Week 13

Teachers act as designers every day in the classroom. They are designing a learning format for their students and coming up with different ways and ideas to assist their students in learning. Teachers can use the technologies of the computer to come up with different idea to help their students to learn. Being creative and educational all at the same time can be a very affective way of having successful students.

Model car design is a way for teacher to incorporate science, math, and engineering concepts into a project for students to design. The teacher may give the students certain materials that can be used and then give the model car a destination requirement and the student will have to be a car out of the assigned materials and make that car go a certain distance or overcome a certain obstacle. This project is great for bringing out the students individuality and creativity while also requiring the student to think and test their problem solving skills.

Digital story telling can be a very fun way of creating a story to the student . This requires the student to prepare the story, use a camera to shoot a video that goes along with their story, and finally edit their video on a computer using software. This will allow the student to be creative and individual. This seems like a good way to get the students involved in a lesson and keep the student thinking about different ideas and ways to improve their story. I would like to use this technology in my classroom because it seems like a very fun and interesting way to learn about my students and keep their interest which to me is key in learing.

The textbook explains that mathematics is a very visual subject and that students need to be aided with visual examples to understand the concept of math. I feel that hands on learning espeacially with math is a definite key to success. Using the calculators with graphing may help students to visualize the way that a graph should be and not just the formula to get the graph. Showing a student the outcome and being able to show them how and why this is the outcome will assist you and the student with a better understanding of this sometimes so complicated subject.

I do not believe that simply watching a television program about a subjest can assure you to know that subject to it's fullest. I belive that you must have some hands on experience in dealing with the subject to truely  be tested on your knowlege of the subject. Showing students a math problem and not letting them try it for themselves does not seem like a ver effective way of making sure that a student will retain the information given to them.


References

Crismond, D., Howland, J., Jonassens, D., Marra, R. M.
learning with technology. Columbus: Pearson, Merrill Prentice Hall.

Gee's Principle Blog Assignment

I have chosen the following three principles "Discovery Principle", "Practice Principle", "Critical Learning Principle" because I feel like they are the most important principles to my personal learning and that my students may also bennefit from these three principles also.
 "Discovery Principle" is one of the principles that I chose because I feel that discovering a subject is more important than a subject just being delivered to a student.  A student can get a well rounded concept of a subject by discovering the topic.  It also allows for individualism.  Some students simply approach topics differently and learn them differently and this gives them and advantage to learning.
"Practice Principle" reminds me of the old saying "practice makes perfect". While this is an old saying it is also a very true and effective principlet to follow. Practicing a topic over and over and following repitition until it is almost natural to a student makes retaining the information a much easier task.
"Critical Learning Principle" helps the student to be motivated in a positive way. When you promote a more postive atmosphere for your children they will be more relaxed and this may assist you in helping the student to learn more. We all can agree that when we are nervous, pressured, or scared of saying the wrong thing, we seem to not perform as well as if we were relaxed.

The simulation I would create would be to give my student actual circumstances that may happen in life and see how they would approach that situation and what reasoning that they would use to solve the issue that may be handed to them. I am an Agricultural Edcation major so my students may be dealing with a number of tasks on a daily basis. For example I may ask my students if they were judging a livestock show and they were to have to pick the best animal by appearence only what qualitys they may look for in that animal to be the determining factor in the way that they will place that animal in the show. I will bring this information to them and help then to rationalize their answer and discover the tacts used in livestock juging and quality.

In conclusion I feel that the principles given are very effective way of presenting material to students no matter what the subject may be. It would be hard to go wrong by giving your students a positive atmostphere, helping the to explore their subjects, and practicing repetively with them on the topics learned.  I would learn this way and I am almost certain that young learning students in a classroom would also effectively learn this way.

Jonassen. D Howland, J. Marra  R. M., Grismond, D. (2008). Meaningful Learning With Technology. Columbus: Pearson, Merrill Prentice Hall.