{"id":5920,"date":"2018-04-02T14:17:51","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T21:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/?p=5920"},"modified":"2018-04-02T14:18:30","modified_gmt":"2018-04-02T21:18:30","slug":"5920","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/2018\/04\/02\/5920\/","title":{"rendered":"LfU, GIS, & Minecraft Club"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some Belated Thoughts on LfU & GIS<\/strong><\/h4>\n

As with the WISE lesson, when this lesson\u00a0asked that I suggest other STEM topics where LfU principles could be applied or how I might adapt it to Math I was stumped. As a rule, I do not like to read the posts of my peers before I have made my own ideas and contribution because I then feel unduly influenced or sometimes like I am taking their ideas rather than forming my own, so I relied on the readings and my own knowledge and in this circumstance that was not enough for me to successfully engage with this level of thinking.<\/p>\n

However, I was very impressed with the use described in the Create a World project (Edelson, 2001) using the WorldWatcher (MyWorld) GIS. The relationship between landforms and climate is a fuzzy one for most students (myself included) and I wish I could have gone through such a unit myself in school. \u00a0I also really liked how the LfU model demands that lessons are explicitly designed to target all three of their steps in the process of developing usable learning. \u00a0The table was well-organized and allowed me to understand how the developers of Create a World structured the knowledge activities after this model. Now, as I reflect on these concepts\u00a0I believe, as an educator, with some more exposure to this model and a refresher on the complex relationship concepts in Science curricula\u00a0I could more easily visualize its applications to other topics within\u00a0STEM. At the time of this module’s lesson I felt unqualified to suggest how\u00a0else<\/em>\u00a0it might be used for learning STEM topics.<\/p>\n

In preparation for my ePortfolio contribution for this lesson, I returned to my notes on the readings and the discussion activities on the blog. \u00a0Now, I also notice that the Motivate, Construct, Refine process closely mirrors the principles of Generate, Modify, Evaluate. \u00a0I also found I really liked\u00a0Mary’s post<\/a>\u00a0about Grade 2 Social Studies applications using Google My Maps. I agree that the MyWorld GIS program is not necessarily primary-student-friendly and My Maps sounds like a much more feasible tool. \u00a0I was also astounded to read in her comments that that one Social Studies expectation takes six months to cover! \u00a0I wonder how many expectations Alberta has for Grade 2 Social Studies? \u00a0Only two at that rate of coverage?? \u00a0I wish I had been able to be present for this discussion during the time that the comments would be watched so I could ask Mary these things. \u00a0I was impressed with the inquiry wording her province created, at first I thought she was listing a project she had created herself. \u00a0Ontario does not have such targeted language where inquiry is concerned, to my knowledge (nor do we have textbooks for primary grades).<\/p>\n

In what ways would you teach an LfU-based activity to explore a concept in math or science? Draw on LfU and My World scholarship to support your pedagogical directions. Given its social and cognitive affordances, extend the discussion by describing how the activity and roles of the teacher and students are aligned with\u00a0LfU principles.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The notion that learning does not take place without the choice of the learner to understand, whether via conscious or unconscious “understanding goals”, as artiulated in LfU’s second principle — “knowledge\u00a0construction\u00a0is\u00a0a goal-directed process\u00a0that is\u00a0guided by a combination of\u00a0conscious and unconscious ‘understanding goals’<\/i>” (Edelson, 2001, p.357, emphasis added), is very\u00a0important as a foundation for the creation of curiosity which GEM, Jasper and WISE also acknowledge.\u00a0The implication of this principle for the classroom is\u00a0that “learning” must be (and can only be) initiated by the learner, whether it is through conscious\u00a0goal-setting or as a natural, unconscious result of experience. This places the teacher’s role squarely in the realm of “experience facilitator” and it follows that useful structures of lesson creation to this end, such as what the LfU process tables are modelling, would be extremely valuable.<\/p>\n

I had collected the following quote\u00a0during my initial readings (emphasis added) and upon re-reading it I was finally able to make a connection that I felt satisfied the above question.<\/p>\n

“The place-based educational approach uses the local environment to teach across the curriculum<\/strong>(Sobel, 2004). It emphasizes hands-on, real-world learning, which engages students and, by connecting the GIS unit with an ecology unit on succession, makes GIS acceptable to the teachers. By entering and querying data in the GIS,\u00a0students worked with maps in a novel way that reinforced and improved their understanding of spatial relationships in their schoolyard. Based on these results, using a place-based approach seems a valuable way to teach students GIS. Introducing GIS and GPS in the students\u2019 familiar and immediate surroundings more easily bridges the gap between the real and digital worlds…Using a place-based approach is inherently more interesting to students than using a generic, one-size-fits-all data set<\/strong>, and the results demonstrate that using GIS as a classroom tool can effectively develop students\u2019 spatial awareness<\/strong>\u00a0while they learn more traditional topics in ecology\u201d (Perkins, Hazelton, Erickson, & Allan, 2010, p.217).<\/em><\/p>\n

I feel like the above bolded and underlined quote can apply to Math as well. \u00a0In general, if we use place-based data sets (perhaps even student collected) rather than textbook-provided examples students can more easily connect to concepts of number and size and distance. Finding the area of our classrooms rather than the iamginary spaces listed in the text would be one\u00a0example. This got me thinking about the activities we are undertaking in our Minecraft STEM Club this year. \u00a0I believe the idea of place-based LfU can be applied with a TELE such as Minecraft Education Edition. \u00a0We are currently beginning the process of measuring our school building in order to graph it and build it MCEE with a recently\u00a0revised\u00a0scale of 1 metre = 2 blocks. \u00a0Reading this quote after reading Mary’s post (linked above) caused me to wonder if perhaps a GIS like Google Earth can show us the school building and yard and then we can import that into Google My Maps to calculate distances for the perimeter of the build? We can then compare that data with the\u00a0trundle-wheel\u00a0walking measurements we’ve been taking to inform our\u00a0grid paper drawings which we will draw in our scale to guide our builders in Minecraft.<\/p>\n

The students are the ones doing the measuring, graphing and building. As the teacher, my role is to provide the structure for their explorations. For example, as we continued to measure different rooms’ lengths and widths some students were able to estimate the height of the ceiling and then check with the secretary and custodian about the actual heights. \u00a0We discovered that some ceilings were only about 2.5 m high. \u00a0I then asked them how they felt about our original scale for this project which had been 1 metre = 1 block. \u00a0They decided that such a scale would be too small where the height of the rooms was concerned. A good discussion about whether we can just change the scale for the height axis or whether that wouldn’t be consistent with the concept of a model being “to scale” ensued. \u00a0They wondered whether the new scale would make the lengths and widths of the room appear exceptionally large in-game. \u00a0Finally, the students decided that we\u00a0should<\/em>\u00a0alter the complete\u00a0scale, and our previous grid paper drawings, to reflect their new knowledge so that the scale of every axis for our build would now be 1 metre = 2 blocks. \u00a0Although I did not plan this using an LfU table, in retrospect and looking ahead, I can see how these discussions fall into the Motivate, Construct, and Refine processes of learning.<\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

Edelson, D.C. (2001). Learning-for-use: A framework for the design of technology-supported inquiry activities.\u00a0Journal of Research in Science Teaching,38<\/em>(3), 355-385. Retrieved from\u00a0http:\/\/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<\/a><\/p>\n

Perkins, N., Hazelton, E., Erickson, J., & Allan, W. (2010). Place-based education and geographic information systems: Enhancing the spatial awareness of middle school students in Maine. Journal of Geography, 109(5), 213-218. Retrieved from\u00a0https:\/\/www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca\/doi\/abs\/10.1080\/00221341.2010.501457<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some Belated Thoughts on LfU & GIS As with the WISE lesson, when this lesson\u00a0asked that I suggest other STEM topics where LfU principles could be applied or how I might adapt it to Math I was stumped. As a rule, I do not like to read the posts of my peers before I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51923,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1669391],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-lfu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51923"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5920"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5923,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5920\/revisions\/5923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/stem2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}