Reflection # 3

This week's readings talked about how to use programming and robotics effectively in the classroom. My main overall thought about some of these articles was: it is cool what technology brings to the table, but why do people think that technology is the "thing" to make learning more meaningful and engaging? I keep seeing these words pop up in several articles, not just with ones related to technology. We (as in my classmates and I) all grew up with much less emphasis on technology than todays generations and we turned out to be well-rounded and intelligent, so what makes using these approaches different or unique?

The Physical Programming: Designing Tools for Children to Create Physical Interactive Environments (Montemeyer et al, 2002) was definitely a unique approach, since most designing of education, whether it be a curriculum or classroom set-up, is designed by an adult rather than children. This kind of reminded me of the movie "Accepted" where students create their own university and create their own classes because it is what they are interested in (sorry for the tangent). I was a little confused about whether the child is supposed to see themselves as part of the story, a storyteller, or a "programmer" of the story (almost an 'architect' of the story). I thought it was interesting how the children were the most intrigued with the outcomes of the parts being programmed (ie, hitting the hand several times to see the light come on) because it makes me wonder what is going on in their head.. are they thinking about how pressing the hand makes the light turn on, or are they just concerned with the seeing the light turn on. I was disappointed that the authors left out some key insights into how this technology would be useful in the classroom, I was left wondering what the actual purpose of this tool was. Was it to teach programming skills, or storytelling/interpreting skills or both?

The article Teachers as Designers: Integrating Robitics in Early Childhood Education (Bers et al, 2002) was interesting to read because I like the constructionist approach to teaching and learning and even though this article caters towards early childhood teachers, I think this approach can work at any age. I agree with the authors when they explain that pre-service teachers lack the technological skills needed to integrate and use technology in their future classrooms. I think the constructionist approach taken when teaching how to use technology in the classrooms by having the preservice teachers go through the process that their students might go through was a unique approach, but where this article lost my interest was in the examples of how the pre-service teachers used programming and robotics to aid learning. In the first three examples, all three lessons could have been taught with or without the use of the robots. Other than possibly provoking some interest because the robots were new and different than what the students were used to, the students did not gain anything from robots being used. The last example impressed me though and I thought one of the key elements to this design was not only were the students using robotics and programming design skills to build an actual robot, they were becoming 'technologically fluent' which was also a goal for the pre-service teachers as well. It seemed to me the first three examples were using the technology to aid in teaching the subject matter, whereas the forth example was teaching design and organization skills, PLUS technological vocabulary.

another sort of food for thought question I have been thinking about is: Does technology make the subject matter relevant and meaningful to the students or is it the technology itself that is relevant and meaningful?

Inquiry? or Inquiry.

This weeks reading had a common theme of getting students to think about the steps and criteria needed to reach an answer. These approaches wanted students to use their existing knowledge, test that knowledge, and reflect on what the results were. It seemed as though there was a cyclical theme, talked about briefly in the White & Frederiksen article, of coming up with an idea of how to get to the answer, testing that idea, analyzing the results, and then evaluating if it is correct, or if another approach should be tried.

Reading the Wilensky and Reisman article, Thinking Like a Wolf, a Sheep, or a Firefly: Learning Biology Through Constructing and Testing Computational Theories- An Embodied Modeling Approach got me excited because as a future science educator, one goal I have that I think is really important, and that these authors really promote, is getting students to think in more abstract/higher level ways, rather than focusing solely on getting the correct answer. The authors argue the basis for needing an embodied modeling approach is because students see the sciences as information to just absorb and memorize (which in some cases is because of the way it is taught in schools), rather than something to test or question. This is SOOOOO true. As someone who holds a bachelors degree in geological science, I have recently been struggling with the fact that I seriously lack critical reading and thinking skills. Sure we read articles about cool ore deposits in Canada or about Kimberlite pipes and diamond formation in Africa, (which is pretty freaking cool), but never once was I asked to question if what I was reading could have been one, out of many, possible answers to why this geologic phenomena occurred. If it's what "The Book" says, then that's how it happened, No Questions Asked. My point is really just that I am in favor of what Wilensky and Reisman are advocating for in this article, learning biology through processes of constructing and testing theories, sort of like what we do with our models each week. The use of technology, such as the NetLogo modeling language, seems to make this goal a little easier in some ways. In the case studies that were presented the software was able to get the students to think about the processes, interactions, and specific elements (ie, in Talia's model whether grass was available or not), and see the outcomes immediately. I thought the most important part of modeling was the revising part, but I think there should be an emphasis on WHY they changed what they did because otherwise it could turn into a game of trial and error until the "correct" graph shows up. Another thought I had was is technology changing the role of the teacher from person who passes along information and knowledge to students, to more of a person who is there as a guide/resource?


Even though I really liked this article and thought the case studies seemed to show that this type of approach does get students involved in the process of scientific inquiry, I hate to say it but... most kids don't want to learn this way, they want to be told what to do and how to do it. Boo :( Which is not to say that this can't be changed, but I think there has been a lot of emphasis put on getting to the right answer as quickly as possible, that a lot of students don't think in this sort of, analyzing, evaluating, testing, hypothesizing way. This was kind of evident in the Explanation-Driven Inquiry article. The software, ExplanationConstructor, is a tool used for getting students to organize and structure their ideas in way that will help them to give better explanations of how they came to their conclusions. To me, it seemed like this software was too much like an outline construction tool. I wrote the question "how is this different than answering questions from a textbook?" in the margins of the paper a couple times. It allowed the students to organize their thoughts clearly, but it lacked a lot of the "inquiry" skills that were talked about in the other 2 articles.

The way I changed my model this week was to take out the different color coordinated "community" boxes and just have a Teacher-Student-Technology box around everything because I think that in order for this type of community to work, everyone needs to be involved and supporting and interacting with each other. It is important for the teacher to be involved with the students and technology and vice versa. I also added a few little points to the model like technology enhancing instruction. I also wanted to add some sort of cycle-like feature to my model for this week, because I thought the "Inquiry Cycle" brought up in the White and Frederiksen article was important, but I wasn't really sure where to incorporate it into my model... any suggestions?