Friday, July 2, 2010
The First Class
I don't have many thoughts on the first session of 504. Technology has a place in the classroom and I hope this class will give us a better idea of what that place is. I think it will give teachers the opportunity to continue learning how to use new and different tools. It will also allow students to interact with each other and the material in a way that is different from a traditional classroom environment. This will work better for some kids, and worse for others. Like anything else, an appropriate balance is needed, and that is the tricky part.
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One of the interesting research tasks ahead for you as a physics educator, Pete, is to think about the kinds of things that your students need to know, or be able to do/demonstrate. The next step is to think about the means available to you to teach these ideas, or to allow students to see them or work with them in ways that seem to you to have potential for helping them to reach a deeper understanding. This class will be one place where, hopefully, you'll have some space and some support as you explore this undertaking.
ReplyDeleteI believe your teaching ability will be greatly enhanced by the use of technology to teach physics. I agree with you that it may help some students more than others. In my personal experience, I found some of the physics technology a few years back to be less than helpful, I was constantly hung up on getting the visuals to work properly, and had less actual learning than I received from my next few physics teachers, who used overheads and small groups.
ReplyDeleteI think it's probably interesting to think about how technology gets used in real physics and engineering applications (I learned to code FORTRAN when working on a particle physics experiment, for instance) and how that could be drawn into the classroom also... so not just wikis and games but also instrumentation and data collection and processing. What do we all have in our backgrounds that would help make the use of technology more real and applicable for the subject?
ReplyDeleteI think that using technology can be help in interacting with students. Yet I am sure that many students have a better grasp of using technology than I do (or at least they think they do). I do not want to be in the position of boring students with my rather limited or outdated understanding of how to utilize certain things. This makes me a little unsure but it also challenges me to make sure I understand what I am using at a deeper than superficial level.
ReplyDeleteAgreed that balance is key. I'm almost concerned that we would rely too heavily on technology in the future that kids in the future lose some of the beauties of culture like handwriting or doing simple calculations in your head.
ReplyDeletePete, I think you make a good point about technology being more of a help to some students than others. I think technology is also another area where we should not expect all students to be at the same level (i.e. success with technology will mean different levels of achievement).
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