The Top 10

I have to start with WOW! The work the kids put into their Wikis were so professional looking. I understand there are templates that can be used to make web pages aesthetically pleasing but the work still had to be put into it. Something at the end of the video caught my attention when the teacher stated that her kids learned more from doing the website work than being taught by the standard method and then be tested. My guess is that by doing this hands on activity and learning through it Fact vs. Opinion that all of these kids would indeed score higher on a standardized test in this area. I think its great. Not only did they learn Fact vs. Opinion (which I have found is a difficult subject for kids when I have had to teach it) but they learned job related skills by developing a website. Kudos to the teacher!  To check out a Wiki that elementary school kids created themselves click on The Top Ten.

Does this activity differ from much of the activities you engaged during your K-12 education? How? or How not? Give examples.

Absolutely! I come from a totally different time frame. Some of my classes had one computer but they were the old OLD Apples. The kind that only have a flashing prompt when you turned it on. You then had to slide a disk into it to play games or practice typing. There was no Internet, at least not the kind accessible by the public.  I do have to give props to my 10th grade computer programming teacher who taught us how to use DOS by having us create pixelated cartoons that moved.  That was quite cool.  But I gave away the kind of technology there was at the time by same "DOS".  The advancements that have been made since then are phenomenal.

Is your learning style addressed in this activity? How? Give me an example.

Yes.  The kinesthetic or tactile portion of this project being hands on is definitely appealing to me as a student.  The fact that the students were taking part in gathering data to determine Fact vs. Opinion is much more appealing to me than listening to a teacher give me examples.  Also there is definite visual appeal.  Its not that I learn better when something is visually appealing, its that I want to take part in something that is visually appealing.  Before I started this class, my favorite part of blogging was positioning pictures just so around text to help make my point or build my story.  It may be just a personal preference I have but it is something that drives me. 

This project was implemented without the use of textbooks. Are you surprised? Are you interested in teaching in a similar way when you become a teacher?

No, I'm not surprised at all.  There aren't many subjects that need a textbook to guide a lesson.  Its a lazy cop-out if you ask me.  And sometimes I wander if its not because a teacher is not comfortable with the subject he or she is teaching.

I think science is better taught without a textbook.  For example: "What is a mineral?"  For a child to understand what a mineral is they need to see it, touch it, and for Halite - taste it.  If a child has never seen a mineral, how does reading from a textbook help them to understand what a mineral is.  My child is in 3rd grade learning science from a textbook.  Not experiments or first hand experience.  But purely from a textbook.  What is he learning?  Nothing.  At least not from class.  The fact his mom is enthusiastic about science and has the time to sit with him and show him different minerals makes him lucky.  What about the other kids?  What are they learning?  And we wonder why kids form a bad opinion about science at an early age. 

What are your concerns and what do you anticipate as being barriers?

Actually, what bothered me about the video was in the introduction.  I could not believe how much that school had when it came to technology.  Its not that I don't think they should have it.  The kids deserve it.  But what about the school my kids attend?  I've been in a couple of schools in Marion county and we don't have near the amount of technology that one school had.  The first thought that went through my head was, "That's not fair!"  So how do struggling schools and counties compete?  How much difficulty would a struggling school have in carrying out such a neat project, especially if their computer systems were outdated and slow.