For this blog, we're supposed to read three articles:
Grounded Tech Integration
Tech Integration In Our Respective Subjects
LAT Taxonomy In Our Respective Subjects
Once read, our assignment is as follows:
For your blog posting, please reflect on your perception on the intuitiveness and utility of the AT approach to planning. Think about how this approach might support or conflict with what you're learning in your methods courses. Finally, please post any questions or concerns you have relating to the AT approach itself, particularly activity types, or any of the articles.
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I think these articles provide some information about the various activity possibilities for Social Studies instruction. I also liked that the Grounded Tech Integration article stressed that tech integration should not be the focus of a lesson, rather the curriculum standards ought to be. I was a little confused by this sentence, though: "Quite simply, we suggest matching technology integration strategies directly to how teachers match—by specifying learning activities—rather than asking teachers to plan instruction to the opportunities offered by educational technologies." How teachers match what?
ReplyDeleteI think an activities based approach is a good idea, though I find myself concerned at the prospect of constantly design a lesson with an activity in mind. Sometimes life doesn't offer you activities. Sometimes it gives you a task and demands it be completed. I don't think it's necessary to always have some sort of activity at the heart of a lesson. That being said, I do feel that planning a lesson with an activities approach would be quite intuitive--creating a timeline in history is an activity and it is a significant learning experience for students as they focus on placing events in the correct sequence.
I also think this approach complements much of what Dr. Stoddard has taught us in methods. So far we have written two lessons for him and both have an activity at the heart. One was an inquiry lesson in which students have to constantly generate & revise hypotheses based on data sets and the other was a concept formation lesson in which students have to systematically build up an understanding of a particular concept. We've also talked A LOT about discussions--I noticed this activity being listed in the very first table in the LAT Taxonomies article.
My CT loves the use of graphic organizers. She does not create lessons around them, but she often assigns students the task of creating a graphic organizer of the day's lesson as homework. I like this activity as well as the suggestion of creating an artifact in the Taxonomies article.
One final thing I'd like to mention is the disparity in number of activities focused on building knowledge versus expressing knowledge. At least for Social Studies, there are nearly twice as many of the latter than of the former. Does anyone else think this is disproportionate? Shouldn't activities help our students in learning not just expressing?
Erin, thanks for creating a post for this assignment...
ReplyDeleteI would like to make an effort to clear up what the authors meant by this sentence: "Quite simply, we suggest matching technology integration strategies directly to how teachers match—by specifying learning activities—rather than asking teachers to plan instruction to the opportunities offered by educational technologies." I believe they mean that we as teachers make instructional choices based on learning activities and standards we need our students to meet. Therefore, the inclusion of technology should follow the same manner--choosing according to activities and standards--rather than choosing according to a certain technology. This way it is more authentic for the teacher and students, and doesn't force the technology down the throats of anyone.
For science methods, we have been learning about the 5E method: engage, explore, explain, extend, and evaluate. From this, we are very much involved with activities, because the engage/explore part consists of the students 'doing' something. While not every single lesson will cover all of the 5Es, each lesson will cover some of them, lending the lessons very much to the activity type approach. So, the activity type approach is a natural progression of the 5E method, and will be useful when implementing technology into my lessons.
Also, for science activity types, there are 17 knowledge-building activity types and 11 knowledge expression activity types. So, in science's case there are more knowledge building than knowledge expressing, which fit more with Erin's thinking about learning instead of just expressing (though one could argue that expressing done properly--meaning using the higher orders of Bloom's--must include the knowledge, so when students express they also use their knowledge). The authors also break down the knowledge building into two types: conceptual and procedural. I found this to be a good idea, because they are two different types of learning that need to be addressed as we create classes that are focused on safety and learning the content when in laboratory experiment situations. Overall, the activity types make sense, and are familiar ways of working in labs and in the classroom teaching.