W13&14

Rewards narrow our focus and concentrate our minds. Cases like "the candle problem for dummies" in Daniel Pink's TED talk show that reward work. It has been scientifically shown, however, that work that requires thinking and creativity is actually negatively effected by rewards. I think this can be applied to STEM in many ways. Classroom environments distribute rewards in a very obvious ay--grades. When students are rewarded by grades, I think oftentimes there can be an unfortunate loss of true learning and thinking--poorer performance. Students simply aren't given as much room to think and be creative when all they are concerned about is how to pass the exam. Of course we have to have grades--but I think the knowledge of this concept amongst educators carries significant weight.

In the Principles and Practices of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) video, there are numerous aspects that relate to How People Learn. They also relate to other concepts we've talked about in this class, such as conceptual change. Conceptual change is how a person's perspective changes as they age, or how the perspective of people in general changes over history. The video also discusses how students at various ends of the intelligence spectrum are underserved, as each student comes from a different perspective and  handles each lesson on an individual level.

The guidelines for UDL relate to being a STEM learner. For example, multiple means of engagement suggests that "learners differ very dramatically in what does engage them". This suggests for students that not being good at one skill doesn't imply a lack of ability or knowledge. For teachers, this requires consideration when designing of lessons. This includes consideration of where students should sit, if the lesson should target visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners, etc. It also requires consideration of how the classroom is set up.

W11&12

To me, defining thinking requires thinking. It requires curiosity and the ability to follow-up on that curiosity. Thinking is drawing relationships between ideas, seeking out answers to questions, and approaching problems from different perspectives. The culture of thinking in my area of STEM (science) is very question-and-answer based. It involves coming up with a hypothesis or prediction and then using both what you already know and what you can discover to formulate conclusions.

What constitutes the essential elements of mathematical and scientific thinking?

Practices, concepts, and ideas

How are external representations related to the elements of mathematical and scientific thinking?

External representations are related to the elements of mathematical and scientific thinking because students use their senses to interpret these external representations before they are scientifically comprehended. These comprehension must commence prior to scientific thinking taking place.

What defines the role for external representations in the knowing and learning of STEM?

External representations are used in many ways in the knowing and learning of STEM. In one video, the discovery of pasteurization is discussed. Science would not be the same if it was not based on eternal interpretations influencing action. The role of external representations are defined by the potential they have to lead to STEM thinking.

W08&10

This week, may partner and I worked on building an elbow out of household items. In our final design, we found it difficult to prevent the model from extending past 180 degrees.

After constructing our own elbow, I found this worksheet online: http://wonderstruck.co.uk/files/Student-Resource-Sheet-1.1-Build-Your-Own-Elbow-Joint.pdf

This would be such a cool idea for an in-the-classroom experience. It touches on various STEM ideas, including anatomy and engineering.

This is a physical model, as described in Developing Model-Based Reasoning in Mathematics and Science by Richard Lehrer and Leona Schauble. They attempt to draw connections between the world of the model and the actual world.

W06&07

This week's discussion got me thinking a lot about my AP Language and Composition class in high school. I already spoke about it a little bit in the discussion, but I want to further elaborate on WHY it was as great as it was.

All of the students in my class had heard from kids the year before how hard the material was and how mean the teacher was. We were told that we would be slandered in class, told we didn't know what we were talking about... that our teacher would count and take off points for every :"like" or "uh" or "um" uttered during a presentation. We were told an A was less common than an F in this class. Finally, we were told that the teacher was crazy. Absolutely, intensely crazy.

During the first semester, I saw students get torn up during their presentations. Our teacher would sit Indian-style on top of her desk and belch out loud, offending maybe of the students in the class. You were given points for how many times you spoke during a Socratic Seminar, but no one wanted to speak because we were all terrified of being told "You better have text to support that" or "Where the heck did you get that idea from?" Every time she printed something, she would make a farting noise and yell "It's coming out of the 'puter from the interwebs!"

When we read A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, a satire proposing that citizens eat their children to save money, we walked in the find a baby doll hanging from the ceiling by a string. Needless to say, we were terrified.

Throughout the duration of the semester, however, she slowly softened. A poem that a student wrote made her cry in class. She was caring and compassionate, and every student in the class began to really love her. Sure, she was weird, and gross, but that was part of her charm. By the end of the fall semester, she was everyone's favorite teacher, but you had to work harder to pass her class that you did to get an A in any other. And the funny thing was, we didn't mind the work!

At the end of the semester, we read Machiavelli's The Prince, specifically, the chapter that asks if it is better to be feared or loved to be a good leader. As we read, we saw that the best strategy to being a good leader is to begin by making people fear you, and then proceeding to make them love you so that they will work hard but also be loyal to you. We were all astounded that our teacher had used this strategy on us. It was crazy! And so cool to see an educator using what she taught us in class in her career. It was inspiring to see that we were the proof of this very old strategy. This is one of the fascinating experiences that I had with education that made me want to be a teacher.

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Long-story-short, this class made it apparent to me what a MAKEOVER some (if not all) sectors of education need. Like the TED Talk by Dave Meyers says, math needs a makeover too, as well as other STEM subjects.

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This, once again, puts me in mind of my Learning Gate experience. It's weird that I keep going back to that, but it's true. This one is in a different light than my previous posts:

I remember in my 3rd grade class, the required reading was Life of Pi. This book has since been made into a very popular movie and many people my age are just now reading the book. When I read it at the time, I got absolutely nothing out of it. I now have no desire to pick it up again because I was so bored with it, and honestly, didn't hardly understand it at all when I read it the first time.

I've heard the book is fantastic, and I believe it is. I think I read the book before I was ready for it. This brings me back to the quote from How People Learn: "children's brains may be more ready to learn different things at different times." I think that as future teachers, we need to be very aware of the audience and what they are capable of taking in. I think my teacher made a big mistake by choosing the book that she did for our age group. It is not enough that the content is great or that you love it as a teacher. Rather, it is important to be aware of what students can and cannot do because otherwise, something that would be perfectly learnable later in life can be absolutely ruined.

The picture above is from the movie, Life of Pi. (https://www.google.com/search?q=life+of+pi&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=d_QRU9GVCcqhkQfE8YDADA&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1518&bih=748#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=9REc5wV1yRwknM%253A%3Ba_6JlWJM8EhxbM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fapi.ning.com%252Ffiles%252FOdjX9Z2ruqTdR4X0YuLXwDZo6Qoaz1EaXHB36jfT8PZX*mFe3nheAzjxz39V4SGbS9KxsgP68uXWwbUve6nC7g5Hu6wuqZDt%252FLifeofPi.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Ffremdeng.ning.com%252Fprofiles%252Fblogs%252Flife-of-pi-summer-reading-book-1%3B1920%3B1080)

 

I think that many of the topics discussed in the last few weeks can be viewed in light of all learning. For example, though I was reading and not necessarily doing math or directly doing science (though we would discuss scientific theme throughout the book), I think we can look to some vocab to illustrate why this failed as a classroom assignment.

 

For example, there was no articulation whatsoever. Articulation is when a teacher works to have students verbalize their knowledge or thinking on the matter. I think if we would have discussed the book in a Socratic Seminar method, maybe I would’ve received more out of it. Instead, reading the book on my own, I didn't learn anything let alone do I remember anything.

The classroom environment was completely not community-centered, which is when the community in the classroom is constructed in such a way to benefit learning. I think this goes hand-in-hand with the articulation. By articulating in a Socratic Seminar format, we could have built a classroom community.

Additionally, there were many other techniques discussed this week that were never used in my classroom, and I didn't get nearly as much out of the experience as there was potential for.

 

W04&05

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After writing about my elementary/middle school experience last week, it's got me thinking how huge of an impact lower level education has on you in your adult years. I think of this as I am deciding who to interview for the Clinical Interview. Originally, I was going to chose my brother Joe, who is now a student at USF studying finance.

As I continue to think about this, however, I realize that his childhood may impact and highly influence his results. He too attending Learning Gate Community School. Because of the environmental influence of the school on his childhood, I think that he might be a really interesting and unique case. Additionally, Joe loves to fish. He has spent a lot of time in the wetlands and understands a lot of the natural patterns that go on there, such as if it is good/bad to fish before/after rain, etc. If I interview him about the wetlands, I actually think his results will show that he knows much, much more than the average adult about wetlands.

Because of this, I am instead going to interview a friend of mine that studies Psychology here at UF. I feel as though she will be a more appropriate representation of the general adult population as far as environmental knowledge goes.

 

The above picture is Joe with a snook!

 

I would consider my brother ot be an expert fisherman. Like the video on the expert of the Beatles White album, nothing sas that being an expert means being an academic or a professional. The topic doesn't need to be biogeochemistry! My brother can be an expert at fishing an areas he's been living in for his whole life, without any real, formal education at a college level.

 

The lesson plan that I wrote about in this blog post stems from my experience interning this last summer in Tampa and the Florida Aquarium. I worked as a husbandry intern in the wetlands department and took care of various exhibits and types of animals, ranging from to fish to birds and reptiles.

I had some "very special" experiences, as my primary biologist would say. He loved to show me the not-so-glamorous parts of working in an aquarium. Some days, this included subjecting me to torture by an overly angry pelican named Lexi, who really enjoyed biting my feet while I was trying to clean her exhibit. Additionally, I pulled fish that were stuck in nets after sitting outside in the heat for several hours. That smelled pretty good. I would be told to "go retrieve Thumper and a Thumper Transport Box" to feed to the 13 foot ball pythons, meaning "pull a large, furry, dead, frozen rabbit out of the freezer and stick it in water in a plastic bin".

All kidding aside, it was a fantastic experience. I did some gross things, but hey, that's what marine science is sometimes. I am fortunate to be able to draw my knowledge gained from this experience to incorporate into my lesson plans.

The picture about is me and two other interns "stuck" in the reptilian shift cage... fun times! 

Thinking scientifically meant more to me after this experience. It means taking into consideration all things that you know about the world, as processes and facts, and making hypothesis on the outside world based on what you already know. The Fish is Fish video goes to show how one's personal experience can affect the way they learn and how they see the world, relating back to constructivist theory.

When viewing the Harvard video, I realize that I really need to do my research! I believed many of the same misconceptions that they do about the seasons. To me, what they see makes at least some sense because though the distance from the Sun does not change much, those few degrees difference is enough to change the amount of heat and light received at any given time.

To learn is to expand on knowledge. Being a competent math or science student is thinking like a mathematician or scientist. Learning means expanding thinking and knowledge. Learning does not necessarily imply understanding. Student thinking can be determined form group tasks, free-writes, and many other ways. This can be assessed by various tests and other activities.

I think part of being an expert of your field is realizing that there is so much to know about it that you probably will never know it all. Experts know everything that there is to know, but recognize how much more potential an item holds.

 

W02&03

After formulating my response to the discussion topic, I wanted to learn a little bit more about Eratosthenes. I found this website: http://www.math.wichita.edu/history/men/eratosthenes.html that talked about his biography. Turns out that he was a pretty interesting individual!

He was the third librarian of the Library of Alexandria.

He created a sieve that can determine prime numbers.

He went by "Beta" because he was never famous enough to be "Alpha".

...and much more!

This seems like a completely random thought... but after realizing that the Greeks determined the circumference of the Earth and therefore understood that the Earth was round during Eratosthenes' time, it absolutely blows my mind that other parts of the world believed it to be flat for SO MUCH LONG! I mean seriously! Spain sent Columbus, who everyone believed was going to fall off the surface of the Earth after passing the horizon. That was in the 1400's... how is this possible.

	Behavioral	Constructivism	Cognitive
Narrative	This perspective combines many fields together, including philosophy, theory, and methodology. It is in regards to primarily observable behavior and how that is predominant to thoughts in the psychological evaluation of individuals. Pavlov and Skinner played roles in the development of these ideals and different types of conditioning.	Constructivism revolves around the idea of experiential learning through experience. For example, inquiry and discovery based learning are both methods of constructivism. This promotes creativity in thinking and improves analytical skills. Teachers in the constructivist realm allow for open-ended questions that promote creative thought and ingenuity. Constructivism is generally challenging and allows for modification of existing knowledge into knew knowledge through discovery.	This perspective focuses primarily on the mental processes associated with learning. It studies attention, thinking, memory, creativity, perception, etc. One of the most important concept in cognitive psychology is metacognition, which is related to how one thinks about one’s own thinking and knowledge. This plays a role in self-evaluation and self-monitoring.
Beliefs	Behavioral psychologists believe that psychological observations should be made based on a person’s actions and behavior and not by their thoughts or beliefs. They believe that most knowledge is learned and that behaviors reflect this knowledge.	Constructivists believe that knowledge is built primarily upon experience. This implies a couple of different things about education. It means that someone’s previous experiences can either help or hinder current learning. Additionally, it implies that the best learning is done in an inquiry, Q&A fashion in which the student is making discoveries about the world.	Cognitive psychologists have many ranging beliefs, including but not limited to those regarding time sensation, semantic memory, working memory, attention, and many other ideas. Furthermore, it delves into personality psychology which includes the “Big 5”: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. Cognitive therapy is used for many people with personality disorders.
Principles	Behaviorists believe in the power of conditioning. They believe that most behaviors are learned through a process of negative and/or positive reinforcements.	Primarily, questioning is the key to constructivism. Students attempt to answer their own questions by thinking outside the box and being provided with loose direction. It allow for more innovation than other perspective and can provide several representations of reality.	Cognitive psychologists believe a broad range of different ideas about different areas of the brain. Thoughts happen in so many areas that it is difficult to but cognitive psychology in a box.
Limitations	The behavioral perspective downplays the role of nature in determining one’s predisposition. Though nurture very evidently plays a large role in one’s actions, it is clear from other psychological research that it is not the only factor in determining such conditions.	Constructivism is not as practical or timely as other modes of learning. It requires students to be excited about the topic, as much of the success that stems from this perspective I based on student questions and drive to answer those questions. It minimizes some basic learning ideas such a memorization, etc. by filling those gaps with larger, more conceptual knowledge, sometimes disregarding the importance of smaller mechanisms of thought.	Many people believed cognitive psychology to be inconsistent with its acceptance of internal mental states. Because it is such a broad area, there have been attacks on the branch for being too general and not specifically pertaining to anything.

 

Constructivism psychological perspective is based on real life experiences developing into knowledge. This particular perspective allow for creativity and individual thought to play a large role in education. I spoke about this quite a bit in my last entry, but thought I'd just describe my own personal experience with it here...

This makes me think of my life as a late elementary/middle-schooler. I attended Learning Gate Community School, a small charter school in Lutz, FL that focuses on environmental education. Each day was an adventure at this campus, located on 35 acres of woodland property. We spent hours on trail walks and investigating nature. Growing up around the forest, I learned to identify various plants , animals, and other ecological features drawn from my experiences.

For example, I still remember to this day several edible plants that are native to Florida. That knowledge was developed from my experiences, running through the woods, identifying various plants when waiting for it to be lunch time. At Learning Gate, we did many other activities to influence our education, such as celebrate Biome Day, a school-wide festival honoring different biomes such as wetlands, tundra, etc. From many of the school plays, living dioramas, and other Biome Day activities that I was involved in, I retained a lot of experience-based knowledge. Constructivism psychological perspective played a huge role in my education.

Here is a picture of my childhood friend Walker and I playing Learning Gate Ball, a modified form of dodge ball in which a ball bouncing off a tree was fair play.

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W01

Thinking requires individuality and creativity. It goes beyond the textbook, beyond the flashcards, and beyond the vocabulary. Thinking is where all the information a person knows is melted together. From here, connections and relationships are made and opinions and ideas are formed.

In the TED talk by Dr. Cabera, I see ideas about thinking and teaching skills that are remarkably refreshing. I feel as though many teachers as of late are downtrodden, sluggish, and just plain tired of the education system pushing mindless material. Real teachers don't want to drill material; they want to inspire, to impact the heart, and to push students to their personal limits to make them the best they can be. This includes shaping and molding students that have opinions; we want to encouraging thinking, not regurgitation. The value of thinking is beyond comprehension.

I had teachers in high school on either end of this spectrum. Everyone that's been through the public system can name the worst, laziest, and least inspiring teacher they came into contact with. For me, it was that teacher that wastes your time. In that classroom where, perhaps you were initially interested in the subject, and the visible exhausted of the teacher is obviously infiltrating your education. Laziness is apparent, and carelessness is even more so. On the other hand, I have had a handful of teachers that have played their part in inspiring the world of tomorrow. Every now and then you have one that just gets you. That understands the mundane life of a student in a world of weary and/or lazy teachers. And most importantly, that knows the value of thinking and what each student will be missing out on if they walk through life like they walk into the classroom of these previously mentioned, not-so-fabulous teachers. These are the ones that pushed me where I am today. I too see the problems with education, and I too want change it from the inside-out.

If Dr. Cabera's ideas were applied broadly to formal education, I believe that the results would be immeasurable. Like I said early, the value of thinking is nearly beyond the scope of the human mind. It is to have opinion. It is to make educated decisions. It is to gain new perspective. And perhaps most significantly, it is to be free. A nation of free-thinkers would look much differently than it does today.