While reading the article "Teaching and Learning Online" I found the different learning styles to be the most interesting. As a high school teacher it is often difficult to find new and innovative ways to keep the students attention. Trying to engage high school kids in a classroom discussion is worse than trying to paddle upstream with a boxcar in tow. When I get the students involved in a project the motivational factor pretty much takes care of itself. I was glad to find this quote from the article.
"Project-based learning is a powerful form of learning for a number of reasons. It provides a
motivating context for the learning activity and the authentic context promotes transfer and
application of the knowledge to outside settings. At the same time the products and
artefacts provide meaningful ways to assess student learning and achievements."
Many people think since I use so much technology in my classroom I am a nontraditional teacher. What this atricle says about project-based learning reaffirms to me that I am doing something right. Most students have a lot of fun with the projects, to them learning is so fun they don't even realize they are learning. Also with various projects you get to see the different students personalities come through as they add their own special twist to the projects they create.
IT 5650 Week 5
16 years ago
3 comments:
Traditional or non traditional you are doing what you can to give your students that best advantage in learning and how to learn on there own in the future by introducing technology to them. The problem that we run into in the corporate world is everyone finds technology fascinating but no one will actually take accountability for there own learning they want it force fed to them. The only problem with force feeding is it leaves the stomach empty because people are different and they need to be able to custom tailor their own learning. So get down with your non traditional bad self and keep forging the way.
I like to use projects too, Jennifer. It is always good to get kids steered in a different direction for their thinking. Have you found a way to make sure at the beginning of the project that kids don't use "prject time" as "hang out and talk to your friends" time? This is one problem I have run into with projects and am curious if you have found a way to break them from this thinking. I also think after reading the material from Medina's Brain Rules for our other class, the idea of the projects is reinforced because you are using a variety of ways to get the information in their brains. It seems this should create stronger learning. So good job on project use!
Project learning using technology-how great is that! Because there are so many choices for tools and resources, I think the teacher can easily get caught up in the tech piece and lose sight of the education piece. You are using technology to educate, not just teaching for/to the technology-keep up the great work!
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