I worked on my digital document a lot over the weekend, but I am still not done. I used my digital camera to record him giving me instruction with my gun. I am not technically inclined so I was totally oblivious to the fact that when my camera records video it also records audio. Now I have a problem because the video turned out quite nicely but the audio is really messed up.
I found some great pictures for my digital document, which is something I am excited about. Unfortunately the excitement is dampered by the fact that I still do not have my narration recorded and I have no idea how to add the music that I want to use.
I am feeling a lot more confident about my ability to finish this project than I was in the beginning but I think I am going to definitely need more time, especially since I am going to need to fix the audio from my video clip and I will not be able to do that until the weekend.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Learning and Action
Before reading chapters five and six I looked at our schedule and noted the title of our next blog. Learning and Action; I started reading thinking that the words would come together and be easy to find and easy to think about. Silly me! I also thought that Gee would simply state the obvious that students learn from doing, not only from reading or listening. Students need to be active learners, whatever that means.
A few pages into chapter five I still thought that my assumption of Gee stating the obvious was true. On page 119 he says; " Learners cannot do much with lots of overt information that a teacher has explicitly told them outside the context of immersion in actual practice." To summarize students need to hear the lecture, read the books and be active in the learning through touching and experiencing a science experiment, right?
I was sort of right, I mean it is obvious that a student is not going to do well in a class where they do read and listen but are given no guidance in the hands on lab that they are actively participating in, will they?
So I kept reading about Lara Croft and trying to picture scenes that I think I have seen from the Angelina Jolie movies, when suddenly I get what Gee is saying! Transfer and Beyond...
Just like a good player can get to higher levels and make more achievements to ultimately win the game, a good student can grow and become smarter by applying the things they have learned before to new tasks and challenges within their curriculum. How does a student do this? They have to transfer prior knowledge and then get creative. This is active learning because the student is actually helping themselves by reaching back in their old memory files and applying an obscure fact from the past to something that is relevant to the present.
I plan on becoming a teacher, and I can only think of a handful of times where I know that I transferred knowledge obtained in one class and used it to be successful in another. My biggest challenge and a new goal is going to be figuring out a way to encourage and incite creativity in my students, no matter what age they are, so that they can be active learners.
A few pages into chapter five I still thought that my assumption of Gee stating the obvious was true. On page 119 he says; " Learners cannot do much with lots of overt information that a teacher has explicitly told them outside the context of immersion in actual practice." To summarize students need to hear the lecture, read the books and be active in the learning through touching and experiencing a science experiment, right?
I was sort of right, I mean it is obvious that a student is not going to do well in a class where they do read and listen but are given no guidance in the hands on lab that they are actively participating in, will they?
So I kept reading about Lara Croft and trying to picture scenes that I think I have seen from the Angelina Jolie movies, when suddenly I get what Gee is saying! Transfer and Beyond...
Just like a good player can get to higher levels and make more achievements to ultimately win the game, a good student can grow and become smarter by applying the things they have learned before to new tasks and challenges within their curriculum. How does a student do this? They have to transfer prior knowledge and then get creative. This is active learning because the student is actually helping themselves by reaching back in their old memory files and applying an obscure fact from the past to something that is relevant to the present.
I plan on becoming a teacher, and I can only think of a handful of times where I know that I transferred knowledge obtained in one class and used it to be successful in another. My biggest challenge and a new goal is going to be figuring out a way to encourage and incite creativity in my students, no matter what age they are, so that they can be active learners.
Situated Learning
Well, I am finally getting caught up in my Gee readings and my blogs. Even though the chapters are amazingly long they are full of information and I am surprised at how my interest seems to peak at certain times and I actually find myself doing more than just reading because I have to for class. Instead of having to reread a page because my eyes read the words but my brain absorbed nothing I am actually rereading paragraphs because my eyes are reading the words but my brain is still thinking about what I just read.
In Chapter 4 about Situated Meaning and Learning I found that I had to stop reading for awhile because I kept thinking about what Gee says on pages 86 and 87. My attention was first peaked at the top of page 86 with; "While video games actively encourage such situated and embodied thinking and doing, school often does not. In school, words and meanings usually float free of material conditions and embodied actions. They take on only general, so-called decontextualized meanings." I think I had to stop and think about this because I know for sure that there have been times when I am sitting in the classroom or reading the assigned texts and I have absolutely no idea what is going on. It finally dawned on me here what Gee has to say about video games. He is not encouraging them in the classrooms but he is showing how important it is that students are given the time and materials to probe, hypothesize, reprobe and rethink. This is especially true in science and math classes. I learn nothing in a class that does not have some sort of hands on activity and where I am discouraged from approaching the same problem from a variety of different angles.
The quote from Chapter 4 that really summarizes situated learning to me is on page 87; "If all you know-in any domain-are general meanings, then you really don't know anything that makes sense to you." If you simply read the book but you don't take the time to analyze it or search for more than the bare meanings then you are not going to learn anything from the author. If you read the science vocabulary, but you don't work more than once in a hands on lab where you can ask questions, make mistakes and then retry things then the vocabulary that you mastered will mean nothing later.
In Chapter 4 about Situated Meaning and Learning I found that I had to stop reading for awhile because I kept thinking about what Gee says on pages 86 and 87. My attention was first peaked at the top of page 86 with; "While video games actively encourage such situated and embodied thinking and doing, school often does not. In school, words and meanings usually float free of material conditions and embodied actions. They take on only general, so-called decontextualized meanings." I think I had to stop and think about this because I know for sure that there have been times when I am sitting in the classroom or reading the assigned texts and I have absolutely no idea what is going on. It finally dawned on me here what Gee has to say about video games. He is not encouraging them in the classrooms but he is showing how important it is that students are given the time and materials to probe, hypothesize, reprobe and rethink. This is especially true in science and math classes. I learn nothing in a class that does not have some sort of hands on activity and where I am discouraged from approaching the same problem from a variety of different angles.
The quote from Chapter 4 that really summarizes situated learning to me is on page 87; "If all you know-in any domain-are general meanings, then you really don't know anything that makes sense to you." If you simply read the book but you don't take the time to analyze it or search for more than the bare meanings then you are not going to learn anything from the author. If you read the science vocabulary, but you don't work more than once in a hands on lab where you can ask questions, make mistakes and then retry things then the vocabulary that you mastered will mean nothing later.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Video Games
This blog is a bit late, sorry!
When we started to read the Gee book, I thought for sure that I would not like it or that I would not understand it because I don't know anything about video games. H0wever, Gee does a good job of explaining what he is saying and I am learning some new ways of thinking myself which I think is the point of his book. I am beginning to look at things differently when t comes to reading and literacy. After we read chapter two and did the activity in class about what we are learning I began to understand Gee better because I was applying his ideas to something that pertains to me and my life.
When we started to read the Gee book, I thought for sure that I would not like it or that I would not understand it because I don't know anything about video games. H0wever, Gee does a good job of explaining what he is saying and I am learning some new ways of thinking myself which I think is the point of his book. I am beginning to look at things differently when t comes to reading and literacy. After we read chapter two and did the activity in class about what we are learning I began to understand Gee better because I was applying his ideas to something that pertains to me and my life.
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