9th and 10th Week

During these two weeks, we will be looking at podcasts, vodcasts, and mobile learning devices. In many ways, I think podcasts are a good way to help kids with the common things. Those things we keep repeating that seem like they never stick beaten their ears. Like my example of the factoring rules. These are things they know, but every once in a while, reminding them doesn’t hurt. You can hear my podcast by clicking on the play button on the Gcast player on the side bar. I could see as a math teacher including possibly the methods of “FOIL” or any other algorithmic event that they could perform the steps with if they had the visual in front of them. This would give the kids a resource to use that is far more relevant to their lifestyle.

I think the vodcast could be used for any type of activity involving math. It would allow the kids to have a portable tutor. These would probably be most beneficial to use when a student needs to see the steps of a more complicated operation. Like, when they need to see completing the square, solving quadratic equations, or synthetic division.

The mobile learning devices best use is one I didn’t think of but am taking from one of my professors, and that is reminders and updates. I couldn’t think of a better way to inform and communicate with these kids than by using this method. The downside is I don’t now how it will work out at the high school level. Or, if I would want to take on the added headache, but it is something I will keep in mind.

Don Bates

7th and 8th Week

This has been an interesting week with the designing of the website. It has also been a week of frustration at times with the organizing and naming files so they can be linked properly. And, getting them to open in the same window so that your desktop doesn’t look like those paintings you see where everything looks like it was thrown on the canvas. I think those are cool in the museums and all, but not when you are trying to navigate from one link to the next. But, I survived, and I think the site serves the purpose of instruction pretty well.

The discussion topic this week is one I’m having a little trouble with also. Like I said it was a week of adversity, but as the saying goes “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” This week's discussion topic involved social networking. I know this is the latest craze among our young adults and some grown adults today, but I’m still not convinced of its educational benefits. I have two teenage sons, and the youngest one is really into this sort of thing. He even helped his grandmother to develop her own Facebook, but I have to agree as was mentioned by others that it is a line I don’t want to cross with my students. Every time my son gets on one of his teachers Facebook pages I get this kind of eerie feeling like he is connecting with them in to personal of a level. Maybe, it is just the dad in me speaking. But, I’ll remain the teacher, and they can remain the student.

Don Bates

5th and 6th Week

Webquests: Inquiry Based Learning?

In these two weeks, we have been discussing webquests. A number of issues came up as to their true benefit. I have found students to enjoy the webquest format. They have always seemed engaged and most of the time they have complete the task without much prompting. It was mentioned that for some high school kids that the assignments were boring. One idea to improve this was by having students add their own questions. I’m not sure this shouldn’t happen regardless of the format of the activity, but I can see that it might have to be done in a more formal manner. Another question that arose was addressing learning styles. For this scenario a student had an idea of using more than one webquest for one topic. That way you could address varying learning styles. This was an excellent idea, and it is one area of material development that often gets limited attention.

I think the idea of using a webquests without student input is nothing more than busy work as someone mentioned, but if it is planned out in a thoughtful manner with the additions some of the people have mentioned, I think it can be an engaging inquiry based type of lesson. This was a great week of learning and reflecting on the how, when, and why of using webquests, and by using the thought processes that have been mentioned concerning areas of developing a lesson, I can improve my lessons regardless of their format.


Don Bates