STS 1 - Module E National Curriculum and Skills for Learning

This week's lecture looked at two topics: the National Curriculum and skills needed for learning.

The National Curriculum is the result of a government effort to produce a national curriculum for Australia. See the web site for details.

We had discussed the curriculum for Mathematics in our tutorial and our tutor had encouraged us to download and read the maths curriculum. The curriculum covers years 7 to 10. It is well-structured but probably slower in pace than I would have expected.

The second topic of the lecture was the teaching of skills. The broad questions were "what skills do we need to teach", "how will you teach them" and "how will you sequence the learning".

Three phases of learning of skills were presented

1. information is learned
2. skill is used
3. skill becomes part of normal behaviour

This is similar to the Observe, Practice, Perfect approach to learning a skill.

It is important to provide tools to students so that they can reflect back on their learning of a skill, so that they can assess their level of competence and do more learning if required, and also transfer the learning of this skill to the learning of other new skills.

ELPC 1 - Educational Gaming 2

As a keen game player, Gee (2007) writes enthusiastically about the ability of video games to engage young people "in an activity that is hard, long, and complex".

Gee's conclusion is not that schools should play video games, instead he asks "how can we make learning in and out of school, with or without using games, more game-like ... ?" (Gee 2007).

In order to understand games, Gee lists sixteen of the learning principles that good games incorporate. Gee argues that schools need to consider these principles and apply them in the classroom.

I would suggest that many of these principles would appear to be part of mainstream school life already. For example, in principle 7, Well-Order Problems, Gee states "equal thought needs to be paid to how to order problems in a rich immersive space in a science classroom". Thousands of science teachers around the world are attempting to order problems in such a way every day, with or without the influence of video games.

Gee does highlight some principles of games that do not readily appear in the classroom. Interaction is a key feature of games but does not occur in a textbook. Video games encourage risk taking, but assessment-driven teaching does the opposite. And finally games promote performance before competence where players learn skills by doing, in contrast to the classroom approach of teaching a skill and then practising by drill.

One principle listed is that games are pleasantly frustrating. Having witnessed many tears and tantrums (including my own) sparked by frustration at video games, I think that games do not always stay as well-aligned as Gee suggests. However, something about video games draws frustrated gamers back whereas school work pushes frustrated learners away.

Gee, J. (2007) Good Video Games and Good Learning Collected Essays on Video Games, Learning and Literacy, Lang.

ELPC 1 - Educational Philosophy

I believe there are many ways to experience the wonder of the world; Mathematics provides a crucial perspective on how to understand and think about the world.

As a teacher, I want to demystify Mathematics and motivate students to understand why Mathematics is important. I want to assist students develop the numeracy skills necessary to participate in modern society.

As all students are different, when teaching I will use a range of techniques that engage and provide meaningful learning experiences. For example, collaboration is an effective approach that can be used to teach Mathematics at all levels.

Mathematics is one component of education. I see myself working in partnership with other teachers to provide a school that offers a range of formal subjects and extra curricular activities (ranging from sport to music to debating to drama) that allows students to develop into balanced, complete and inquiring individuals, set for a productive life.

STS 1 - Module D - Pedagogy

I watched the on-line lecture on Pedagogy, subtitled "Why is it all so complicated?".

I find the various theories interesting but I also find that the theories tend to be extreme. By this, I mean that the constructivist approach is described as where "knowledge is created rather than received". But it appears (to me) that some knowledge is received and that other knowledge is created.

Authentic pedagogy has appeal. The notion that students should just experience and hence learn, ignores the knowledge that has been accumulated by humanity. So the idea of disciplined inquiry makes sense. The idea that some knowledge is more authoritative than other knowledge does mean that there will be values-based arguments about what is more authoritative, but to me that is the role of a society, to argue and develop a set of relative weightings.

Both the Productive Pedagogy of Queensland and the Quality Teaching of NSW and ACT seem to be well-developed, thorough and sensible platforms for teaching. They are a good argument that education should be a federal responsibility in Australia - why have each state developing very similar approaches, when an Australian-wide approach would work?

I liked the guiding questions from the Queensland approach: what do I want the students to learn, why does that learning matter, what will the students do and how well do I expect them to do it?

The link to an article showing how to develop the design of a unit in the framework of Quality Teaching demonstrated that it is important to not just design the lessons but also think about how the unit outcomes match up with the elements of the model. For example, what higher-order thinking should the unit include?

ELPC 1 - Educational Gaming 1

I decided to look at Educational Gaming as my first topic. While spending far too many hours playing Civilization 3 I have thought, I wish I played this game when I did history at school.

Where to start? I starting skimming articles in Meg's library, but decided to read Klopfer et al in detail when I saw that they advocate Civilization as a learning tool.

The article is a well-written, positive piece on gaming and simulations. I liked the teacher examples that had successes but also listed challenges. Their argument that using gaming and simulation technology should be an evolution rather than a revolution matches my own view on technology in most situations.

The article claimed "these technologies are more than just entertainment". Later in the article the skills that generated by playing video games are listed. I want to look at this research further to see how the development of the skills is measured. It appears that video games must be developing skills such as problem solving, but if the player is using trial and error or merely developing skills using buttons, especially without having any meta-analysis on the problem solving, then the problem solving is more like rote learning than deeper learning. More in a later blog entry.

I will look at Lure of the Labyrinth which is a game than is claimed to develop algebra skills. Another blog entry? The article suggests that "ill-structured domains" like history are ideal for games. What about a well-structured domain such as mathematics?

I also read the Hommel article. The irony noted by Prensky that most educational games are simple, while entertainment games are complex, is interesting. I am not sure that just because a game is complex that it must therefore provide learning opportunities.

This article also noted that educators can learn from games, even if games are not used in the classroom.

I wonder what behaviourists would make of computer games: are there too many rewards required to make real learning happen? Is competition (against the machine, friends) a good way to encourage learning?

And finally, what about non-technology games: Is Diplomacy as a board game a better learning experience than Diplomacy the computer game?

Hommel, M. (2010) Video Games and Learning, School Library Monthly, Volume XXVI, Number 10, June 2010.

Klopfer, E., Osterweil, S., Graff, J. and Haas, J. (2009) The Instructional Power of Digital Games Social Networking Simulations and How Teachers Can Leverage Them. The Education Arcade, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Comment on Zoe's First Educational Foundations Posting

Here is my comment on another students first Educational Foundations posting. Zoe discussed the scenario of Jane at a remote school.

http://zoegraddip.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/blog-post-1-scenario-2-jane/#comment-2

Comment on Himel's First Educational Foundations Posting

Below is the link to my comment on another student's posting for Educational Foundations. Himel also wrote about Wayne.

http://hgeddip.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/ed-founds-module-a/#comment-2