Mini Lesson

What went well in your teaching? Based on what you learned as an instructor, what changes would you make next time?
I think my mini lesson included all of the appropriate steps and was written in a way so that any teacher could follow the directions. I tried to give the appropriate background before the mini lesson which actually occurs on the second day. The background information ended up being rather lengthy for a second grader. However, if I were to really teach this lesson, the students would have already had day one’s instruction and so it was not really an accurate scenario. Additionally, I had trouble describing to my learner certain ideas such as what the “office” button is. If I were to really give this mini lesson, I would demonstrate as I was explaining so that the students can actually see what I am doing.
Teaching of this mini lesson was beneficial to me because my learner pointed out a couple of mistakes that I had made, such as not explicitly telling students to “left” click. Because of her feedback, I will be able to go back and make a few corrections before turning in the final webquest.

Inquiry Lesson

Based on your learning experience in the LifeSaver lesson, describe the attributes of inquiry learning.

The purpose of inquiry learning is to find out about a topic through asking questions. It is systematic and goes through a series of steps. First analyze your materials and resources and determine what can be discovered using what is available. Then it can be beneficial to brainstorm possible questions and ideas. Next, one might determine what steps to go through to find out the answer to the inquiry. The next step is to conduct the experiment or research, while keeping track of the data. Sometimes this can be done easier using Excel. Afterward, an analysis of the results must be done to determine if the original inquiry was answered and to prompt further questioning in the future.

An inquiry assignment would be a great thing to teach to students. I think of all of the individual students who ask individual questions about topics. Teaching them how to find an answer to their inquiries using this approach, would give them just one more tool on how to be active in their own learning.

Scaffolding

From a learner perspective, how did the lesson activities support your achievement of this task? How did technology help you modify the files to meet your needs as a learner?

We did a proposal on implementing a composting system. Before we prepared our power point presentation, we utilized a brainstorming chart, which helped us get all our ideas out; a problem filter, to determine if our problem was something we realistically could solve; and an action plan, which helped us organize our plan. These activities helped us to organize our ideas before we took on the job of preparing our power point. What Christine did by preparing these activities for us was a form of scaffolding. She is supporting us with prompts to help us, with the target being that eventually we won’t need theses prompts.

By setting up these activities as templates, we were able to go in and add things directly to the worksheets without altering the master copy. By having hidden slides in the power point, we were guided as to how to approach each slide, but it was not seen on our final power point. Both of these uses of technology would be very useful in a classroom to help children learn a process, for instance. By using templates and hidden text or slides as guides initially, you are supporting or scaffolding students into how to do a process. Eventually, as you disassemble the scaffolding, they will be able to accomplish a task independently.

Widget

How do you envision discovery learning as part of your teaching and curriculum?

With discovery learning, a student has the freedom to make almost all decisions in regard to their assignment or project. In the assignment we did today, we were to try to convince “Mr. Widget” to expand his business to another country. We were able to pick any Pacific Rim country we thought would be best and were able to approach it however we saw fit. Without even knowing it, we learned about the country’s culture, economy, government, and other aspects. But most importantly, it was enjoyable. I think this could be a great tool for grade school students. If a student has the freedom to make many of the decisions in regard to their assignment, they are more interested and therefore more invested. This could potentially eliminate complaints of boredom as the student is in control. Additionally, if they learn within an area of interest, I believe they will retain the embedded lessons better.

Beliefs

I believe that technology can help enhance learning in the classroom, but that learning is not dependent on it. Additionally, I believe that technology should never be a replacement for a human. But I think some people can learn better through use of technology. For instance, just like some people thrive when working with people, others do better working independently. Perhaps for those who do better independently, technology can give them what they cannot get from a “real” human. In the third grade classroom I interned in, the technology I really believed we used the most was a document camera. We used it constantly. We also used the internet for math games and for doing research. Additionally, we used the laptop computer with the document camera at times. I think technology has supported the learning, but the classroom was never dependent on technology. We could manage without it. But it was helpful to enhance certain lessons or projects.