Exploring the four Technology Enhanced Learning Environments in Module B was a reflective process for me that has furthered my understanding of what a student centered classroom can look like. Many of my students bring their own device so the opportunities in my classroom are limited mainly by my understanding of resources that are available.
I was especially impressed by WISE and the flexibility to personalize lessons to fit your own specific needs. The lesson on Learning For Use was the one that I drew the most parallels to my own teaching pedagogy. The context in which students learn is so important to whether or not they will be able to access this knowledge in a useful way at a later date.
The Jasper series aimed to create real-world problems for students to solve and did a great job of requiring students to create sub-questions from larger ones; I do, however, think that the actual topics of the questions would need to be modified to be more engaging to students. My understanding of constructivism and inquiry learning is that not only should the problem be real-world, but also something students can relate to (I don’t know if flying an airplane is something my students are all that familiar with).
As a Business Education teacher, I was inspired by the resources presented in this module to continue to search for those that could be used in my classroom.
| Learning Goals | TELE Explored | |
| Anchored Instruction & Jasper | Anchor the learning in a real-world problem. Students learn to generate sub-questions from the larger question with the aim of creating critical thinkers and not just students answering basic end of chapter problems. | Jasper is a set of videos that presents problems to students in an engaging way. They are real-world; although, I think they could be more relatable to the students. |
| SKI and WISE | Scaffolded Knowledge Integration where students are given the chance to document their learning and revisit it to continually build understanding. The SKI framework, like the others, is aimed to lead students through a process of inquiry. | Through WISE, students are guided through a set of lessons to gradually build understanding of a topic. The lessons I explored were relatively traditional in that they provided information, and then allowed the student to apply this knowledge in a simulation. |
| LfU & MyWorld | Learning For Use – Learning takes place through constructing new knowledge and modifying previous knowledge, knowledge is goal directed and the context in which the knowledge is constructed matters. Three main aspects of LfU are motivation, knowledge construction and knowledge refinement. | MyWorld allowed students to explore the the geography of our planet (earth), create our own and predict what weather patterns will occur. |
| T-GEM & Chemland | T-GEM is a learning theory that leads students through a process of inquiry. The main elements are to Generate a relationship, Evaluate that relationship and finally Modify it based on the exploration in stage 2. | Chemland is a resource used to teach post-secondary chemistry concepts. It allows students to manipulate many different parameters and immediately see the impact those changes have on the experiment. |
Bodzin, A. M., Anastasio, D., & Kulo, V. (2014). Designing Google Earth activities for learning Earth and environmental science. In Teaching science and investigating environmental issues with geospatial technology (pp. 213-232). Springer Netherlands. http://www.ei.lehigh.edu/eli/research/Bodzin_GE.pdf
Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt. (1992). The Jasper Experiment: An Exploration of Issues in Learning and Instructional Design. Educational Technology Research and Development, 40(1), 65-80. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/stable/30219998
Edelson, D.C. (2001). Learning-for-use: A framework for the design of technology-supported inquiry activities. Journal of Research in Science Teaching,38(3), 355-385. http://ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login?url=http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1002/1098-2736(200103)38:3<355::aid-tea1010>3.0.CO;2-M
Khan, S. (2007). Model-based inquiries in chemistry. Science Education, 91(6), 877-905.
Khan, S. (2010). New pedagogies for teaching with computer simulations. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 20(3), 215-232.
Prado, M., & Gravoso, R. (03/01/2011). The asia-pacific education researcher: Improving high school students’ statistical reasoning skills: A case of applying anchored instruction College of Education, De La Salle Universi
Hi Baljeet
I like the fact that you discussed BYOD (bring your own device). This might drive some teachers to go crazy — if students brought their own device and the teacher had to make sure the lesson works on every different device – YIKES! I know in my own online high school classes…I make sure before they start that their computer/device are able to view examples of my content.
I wonder if could expand on what you mean by “flexibility to personalize lessons to fit your own specific needs”.
A good next step might be to add a lesson or student examples to your table.
Christopher
Hi Christopher, thanks for your comment.
In regards to WISE and the ability to customize lessons, I was referring to the activity we did when we had to enter the editor mode and try to manipulate the different lessons. This is nice because a lesson might be missing something for your classroom uses but you are able to add it to personalize for your students.
Thanks!
Baljeet