Following are some of my reflections after watching the first set of videos in the “grounding issues” section of the course.

Firstly, the educators believed that technology allowed them to provide the students with open ended questions that allowed them to do more critical thinking, think more in-depth and to actually try alot harder when they tackled problems posed. So, teacher perspective on the value of technology was a factor.

In addition, when viewing the video in which the students are growing crystals, I found it interesting that this was actually not part of their curriculum but the educator saw the connections between the growing of crystals and his subject area (physics) and so allowed them to do the experiment and find connections betweeen the chemistry and physics organically. This interdisciplinary approach allowed the students to work on an engaging activity while still learning about thermodynamics (for example).

Technology was used through a “mini-computer” that allowed the students to regulate and display temperature, amongst other capabilities and thus combined chemistry with electrical engineering. The learning looked to be cooperative and engaging and one of the students remarked that “experiencing” the learning first hand was of great value to him.

One thing I thought of when watching these videos is that the technological competence of the teacher seemed high, and this may not be so for all teachers. He would be a great resource in a school as his expertise could be used to help other educators to incorporate technology in their classrooms. I also wondered if he learned this on his own because of his self-interest in technology or if there was training provided.

So some main ideas:

Interdisciplinary Approach

Teacher Efficacy

Open Ended Problem Solving Approach

Cooperative Learning