Week 2: I Love TED

READINGS:

Situated Learning and Education:

The main focus of this article is situated learning: This was defined as “Situated learning emphasizes the idea that much of what is learned is specific to the situation in which it is learned.” Basically this assumption was that something learned in one circumstance does not apply to another circumstance. In this article they give various claims to support this statement; most of which I agree with completely.

The first claim in this article was that “Action is grounded in the concrete situation in which it occurs.”:  An example of this was that homemakers who did very well at making best-buy calculations did much worse on arithmetically equivalent school-like paper-and-pencil mathematics problems. This experiment shows the discrepancies that appear between “real life math” and “school math.” In the article, this theory was illustrated again in how students who memorize a “base ten” system cannot simply transfer this knowledge to another “base x” system of counting. It is my belief that there first there needs to be a technique taught of how to transfer the “base ten system” to “base x” system. My question to the reader is this: Why are we not teaching a “bridge” from “base algebra and statistics” to “Real life budgeting, investing, and personal financing”?

The second claim made in this article was that, “Knowledge does not transfer between tasks.” At first, I disagreed with this claim as I have experienced knowledge that DOES transfer between tasks first hand. This is most prominent with my experience with snowboarding, long boarding, wake boarding, surfing, rip-sticking, and any other type of boarding out there! I started off snowboarding and that knowledge made it EXTREMELY easy to pick up the necessary skills to excel at the other sports. Even though the skills required weren’t identical, the previous snowboarding knowledge bridged over and made the other sports much easier to perform. At the conclusion of this section the authors wrote that “Depending upon the experimental situation and the relation of the material originally learned to the transfer material there can be either large amounts of transfer, modest amounts of transfer, no transfer at all, or even negative transfer. I completely agree with this statement and was very happy that they didn’t stick with the headline of “Knowledge does not transfer between tasks.”

The other two claims were that “Training by the abstract is of little use” and “Instruction needs to be done in complex social environments.” I feel like I went into extenuating detail on the other two points so I’ll be rather brief on these two: I agree! There needs to be specific examples taught alongside abstract ideas, and instruction doesn’t need to be done strictly in a classroom on a blackboard. I believe that the best type of learning is done in hands-on settings with social interaction. This is how tradition, language, and social behavior is learned and I believe most classroom activities should be accompanied in being taught the same way!

Teaching for conceptual change:

Different types of change:

1.     Over hall/Complete change: Ex: The old has gone, the new has come

2.     Swap: Ex: A change in position, title, or occupation

3.     An Increase or decrease in something: Ex: “Addition/Subtracting”

One of the key factors in the article that was pointed out is that the student needs to decide that he/she wants to change his/her viewpoint or understanding. Without the self-acceptance for a need to change a thought process, there will be no true change occurring. Simple repetition of information that the teacher wants to hear is not true learning at all!

After reading through the rest of this article I found this resource online: http://www.mindresearch.net/about/

It’s called the MIND research institute and is all about changing the way teachers approach teaching math concepts to kids. Instead of trying to change the students view, this program is attempting to help teachers change the way they teach! Making math concepts fun and engaging for students through interactive math games seems like an excellent way to get students excited about learning! What do my readers think? As an aspiring future math teacher I would love to use this resource!

How people learn:

This week of class, we were instructed to read over chapter 4-6 in How People Learn. These three chapters showed a lot of the psychology and science that has been done to determine how students and young children learn. This material was extremely fascinating to me and I loved reading through all of the experiments that have been done throughout the years. My favorite chapter, chapter 4, discussed a lot of the experiments that were done on younger children that determined how their thought process developed at a very young age (6-13 months).

Through the videos I have watched, my own person readings, and my own personal experiences, I have come up with the following question in regards to a summary of week 2: What is the best method of teaching? Science experiments, testing, and classroom theory all have different results with different methods working in different situations. Therefore, how can we as teachers decide which method to pick? My answer is that this is actually one of the main jobs of the teacher: deciding what method of instruction is right for an individual student for that particular subject at that particular time is one of the necessary skills required to be an outstanding teacher! The BEST teacher is the teacher who continues to improve on their own lessons, not being complacent in their ways.

Extra materials:

Five layered question: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover

I absolutely loved this video about teaching math with patient problem solving. Everyday practical math is something that comes natural to me so I often don’t think about having to explain it to someone else. Dan Meyer nails the tail on the Donkey during this video when he quoted Einstein. The problem is definitely more important than the solution! I dread working with the textbooks that are out there today as most of the problems are cookie-cutter jargon that has little to no learning capacity other than formula memorization!

I also thought something was interesting when he demonstrated the snowboarding/steepness question. For some reason it struck a chord very similar to the 5E lesson plans, but within a single question instead.

His five steps were

1.     Visual (Engagement)

2.     Question (Exploration)

3.     Structure (Explanation)

4.     Steps (Elaboration)

5.     Resolution (Evaluation)

The steps don’t match up exactly, but I thought it was interesting how eerily similar these two processes were.

Excel sheet over different types of learning and environments: 

	Conceptual Change	Situated Learning	Social Constructivist	Models & Modeling
Learner-Centered Environment	The learner is interested in the material Possible previous knowledge   Is open to the idea Recognizes that learning is a choice The student is looking for information by themselves	Teacher designs an environment for the student to learn on their own  Examples: Labs, hands on activities, use of technology Responsibility of learning information is placed on the students	Students give opinions on social/environmental/political issues Have debate/questioning throughout the class.  Is build upon prior knowledge like a pyramid Encourages students to pursue something they are passionate about
Knowledge-Centered Environment	Students express ideas through prior knowledge Students explain new information obtained How has the student's view changed? Focuses on the hows and why questions	Student's use their own knowledge to get to their own conclusions Teacher gives brief demonstration/instruction Similar to an apprenticeship/internship Students research the material for themselves or pick from a list of materials	Use of logic and reason to fix a social issue Instructor leads a discussion with probing questions about the subject at hand Inter-relates many subject pools that students can pull knowledge from
Assessment-Centered Environment	Shows how far students have understood the information presented.  Concepts are demonstrate ability through presentations/reports on how their views have changed Assessments based on skills acquired instead of "memorizing facts."	Open ended questions Lab reports Real world applications Do the students know how to apply the information they know to the real world?	Students debate and discuss topics within one another, searching for the truth. Have students learned new information that affects something personal to them? What is it? Self Assessment: What have I learned?
Community-Centered Environment	Students participate with each other.  Teachers and students have an equal say Freedom of speech in the classroom A classroom "community" instead of a "dictatorship."	Group projects/problems: Possible a challenge day with a problem question.  Teacher brings students together to work as a team effort, but lets the students learn how to cooperate among themselves.	The community within the classroom must be devoted to learning and loving what they are learning about: (Is this possible in the common classroom?) Information learned is used outside of the classroom in the community: This can be seen with community projects, community service, jobs, ect...  Technology is used to communicate information with other students