When looking at the instructional strategies used from the text, it is apparent to notice the correlation between them and the constructionist perspective. For example, Mr. Dave McDivitt's multiplayer World War II strategy game is very similar to the board game "Risk". Students who are familiar with "Risk" will have a much smoother transition of assimilating the game into an existing mental map than other students. Students who are unfamiliar will have to accomodate the information by adjusting their existing mental maps.Thus, students are able to accomdoate their mental equilibrium.
Additionally, students in Mrs. Omar's 5th grade class created a spreadsheet with Microsoft Excel in order to learn about savings, investments, and interest rates. Through the creation of the artificat, students are actively participating in constructionsim and creating mental maps of the knowledge they gain. While students may not remember the mathematics or the graphing skills they used, they do create a foundation to build upon later. Most importantly, however, is learning that savings and interest and lead to big earnings over time.
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I agree with your idea that students who have prior knowledge of the game RISK, will engage easier. How would you accommodate for these differences with your students so that everyone could move forward with creating their own mental map? Do you think that a lot of pre-teaching was required for the Excel project in Mrs. Omar’s room?
ReplyDeleteIn order to accommodate the differences with the students I would break the students up into groups of "Expert", "Intermediate", and "Beginner". This way, students would play against other students who are at a level similar to their own. In regards to Mrs. Omar's project, I think there would have been quite a bit of pre-teaching for the students before they started the project. Savings, investments, and interest rates are not the easiest topics to learn and even in high school can prove difficult for students, let alone 5th grade students. Also, it is unlikely that the students had much prior knowledge of the topics.
ReplyDeleteUtilizing technology tools often spares students from having to spend time on tedious gathering of data and on data calculations. I can see the pros and cons of this.
ReplyDeleteA con would be just what you said..."students may not remember the mathematics or the graphing skills they used." I fear that in providing students with a spreadsheet with the formula already entered, or in allowing students to use a program to make a graph for them, that many may not learn the skills they need to be able to carry out these processes on their own. Afterall, on state exams students are required to be able to carry out calculations and interpret graphs...will they be able to do this without a program to do it for them?
On the other hand, using these technology tools does allow students to get to the meat of classroom content without the tedious work which might frustrate some students, preventing them from getting the point of the lesson.
Do you have any thoughts on holding students accountable while using these tools?
Holly
I also like the idea of using Microsoft Excel and other computer programs such as Logo to teach mathematics skills. Simulation software also can provide incredibly engaging learning environments, resulating in increased motivation and retention (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, p. 213). It is our goal as teachers to teach to understanding. With technology simplifying problems and showing students how and why to solve a problem, they will understand more. We need to continue taking advantage of the technologies available for to support student learning.
ReplyDeleteHolly, you made a good point about students remembering the formula to solve the problem. How do they remember the formula when they struggle to remember how to solve the origional math problem? I think with enough use of the computer program they would get used to it. As mentioned before, computers are more stimulating and exciting than a pencil and paper, so that may help them retain and want to understand the problem better.