After a little confusion about class meeting times, we got off to a good start on Monday, January 10. We have a large (19) group of students with diverse backgrounds, which will make for interesting and useful interactions as we explore technology applications for classrooms. We began with course and people introductions and then moved into a brief introduction to Logo. Logo provides a backdrop to our course since it was the first educational computer application that focused upon creating an active learning environment for students. 505 students quickly embraced the Logo experiences and worked through primitives, procedures and simple programming. I look forward to seeing the resulting Logo assignments.
I was pleased with our first night together. We have an active, well informed and talkative group, and I anticipate a dynamic learning experience together.
I am a little concerned about the Martin Luther King holiday taking some of our initial momentum, but I think we will all be ready to go with issues like cognitive science, school transformation and blogging!
testng blog comments
ReplyDeleteI shall try this again and hopefully it will work this time.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed our class the other night and especially pondered your comments about the lack of changes in how our schools are structured over the last 30-50 years. You are right that Ames High has changed very little since the time I roamed the halls many years ago. With the exception of some construction updates, the building itself has really not kept up with the changes in technology. The scheduling is basically the same as it was way back when as well. Schools are resistant to change.
As you mentioned in class, we still teach students through rote memorization. With information immediately available on the Internet, memorizing facts is really not that important. But, standardized tests still require students to spit out facts and figures and schools must prepare students for these exams in order to receive good scores. So, if we got rid of the standardized bubble tests, how could we better assess student progress to better reflect what they need to know in the 21st Century?
Dr. Thompson,
ReplyDeleteFollowing your model, I created a blog for my statistics 401D/XW, a semi online class. It has been a week since the blog was "born", I felt that it really helps me establish a nice communication forum for my students. Some students expressed their support for the blog and have started to post and share their comments. I hope that many will come to rely on the blog more for news about the class and additional resources that I have posted and will continue to update. Keeping this blog has helped me manage my time better as I don't have to write the same response to individual students when they asked the same question.
Thanks for a great model.