Thursday, March 20, 2014

Interactive Learning 101

Technology has been playing a huge part in teaching today. Do we integrate technology? Do we continue with no integration? What do we use? What don't we use? How much is too much? Is it not enough?
There are questions brought up all the time in today's classrooms. Now most classrooms are using some form of technology even if it's just a SMARTboard.

After reviewing some articles this week I learned more from one article than I expected. Facebook Video Chat vs. Google Hangouts. First off I had no idea bout Facebook and video chats let alone Facebook and Skype have partnered up.  The article talks about the pros, cons and differences between the two. I have used Google Hangouts for my online class when our group needs to meet, for me it works great. Unlike WizIq it was much easier to use and all of us had no issues with our webcams or audio. I have not tried the new feature of Facebook yet and not sure if I plan to, seeing as I no longer have a Facebook and not every one has one, so signing up just to use the Chat Feature would be a small waste, when you can use Skype or Google Hangouts by using a phone number or email. I am interested to see what battles are created between Facebook and Google in the future as far as who creates what first and which one works better and sticks around...... Let's see what the future holds!

Another article that blows my mind! Methodology explains that it isn't who is teaching a course but how. This for me is a revelation. I grew up in a traditional classroom when technology had not made a big surface yet. We had the old school projectors that if you moved wrong the papers went flying or you moved it the wrong way and it went blurry. We had hunky Dell computers and floppy disks. Now times have absolutely made a change and are much different. A study was done with two almost identical classrooms and one was taught by a veteran teacher giving a traditional lecture--in comparison the other classroom was taught by teaching assistants with TV remote like devices. Guess what class learned more?  Yes, the classroom with the teaching assistants scored almost twice as high on a test.  This might just put us teachers out of business. If anyone with the knowledge of technology and the course information can teach than us teachers should gear up and start being hands on and loose the lecturing method.
                           
                      "It's really what's going on in the students' minds rather than who is instructing them," said lead                            researcher Carl Wieman of the University of British Columbia, who shared a Nobel physics prize                          in 2001. "This is clearly more effective learning. Everybody should be doing this. ... You're                                  practicing bad teaching if you are not doing this.

                      Lloyd Armstrong, a former provost at the University of Southern California and professor of                                   physics and education, agreed that the study shows "it's not the professor, it's not even the                               technology, it's the approach."

The last line of the article states:
                     "Lectures have been equally ineffective for centuries," the Nobelist said. "Now we have figured out                         ways to do it better." 
I couldn't agree more!




       

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