Class 22: 11/15/11-Work Day

Class was scheduled to be a work-day for our final project. We worked on these projects for the last 2/3rds of class, but first Dr. Petrosino took time to address a tragic circumstance currently affecting us as future educators.

Not even two weeks after the news of the Jerry Sandusky/Penn State scandal broke, the nation is still spinning from the shock of it all. Everyone has their own opinion, their own heartbreak concerning the issue. Dr. Petrosino took this awful situation and embraced an opportunity to discuss with us a risk that comes with being an educator – an adult who interacts with minors on a daily basis. While there are no doubt Jerry Sanduskys in the world, there are also times when educators might be falsely accused of wrongdoing. We often shy away from talking about the ways to avoid these unfortunate scenarios, just because the whole topic is detestable. But knowing how to protect ourselves from false accusations is important. Dr. Petrosino and our TAs (Sara and Tara) shared personal recommendations for avoiding and/or dealing with these situations: have documentation of your interactions with students, have other adults present, beware of informal interaction, and join a teacher’s union. Teacher Union Links: http://www.tsta.org/ http://tx.aft.org/

After this discussion, each group filled out a checklist assessing progress on our Legacy Cycles. We then received the rest of the class to collaborate with group members and request advice from the instructors.

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class. Today’s blog is brought to you by Holly­­­.

Class 21: 11/10/11-Hmelo's Response to Kirschner

Today’s PBI class involved discussion of the article “Scaffolding and Achievement in Problem-Based and Inquiry Learning: A response to Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark,” followed by a brief overview of resources for further development of our Legacy Cycle projects, and in-class time to work on the projects.

In the discussion of Hmelo’s response to the Kirschner article, Hmelo makes many main points emphasized by students in the class. Hmelo characterizes two main flaws with Kirschner et al’s argument, the first being pedagogical and the second being their evidentiary base. In addition to these main points, students emphasized the arguments that they identified such as, the research showing the effectiveness of Project-Based and inquiry learning. A student pointed out that the article included the statement, “There was no evidence that they learned more during PBI.” Many studies show that PBI is more effective in the long-term memory aspect. In the Kirschner article, they define learning, and the research shows that they learn according to that definition and goal for the students. This spoke to the fact that the critical definition placed in the Kirschner article added solidity and credibility to their argument, based on that aspect alone. A great point made by another student was that “Kershner is critical of when student have to come up with things themselves. In the response, they made good points about how student’s thinking is narrowed by scaffolding and students are guided at points. Kershner makes is sound as if there is no guidance at all.” With our continual discussion, throughout this semester, of scaffolding and how to properly guide students, this was an excellent point. Although it is being criticized, there is a technique to scaffolding and it is apparent that there has to be structured instruction, even if it is minimal so that it is optimal for students’ understanding.

The second topic of the discussion was if or not Hmelo miss anything in the response to Kirschner et al. Several significant observations of the class included the fact that they did not include much concerning interest and effectiveness of creating student interest and engagement, how many goals of PBI and Inquiry Learning are not yet incorporated into the current goals of education, and how the “hidden curriculum” has become inverted within higher levels of education. These observations from the article bring up many points that have come along in the Uteach curriculum and this course, specifically. We know that as future educators, we have to develop our techniques and experience in appealing to all students and engaging them in the curriculum and classroom environment. Although the article was looking at effectiveness overall, engagement is the first step of many successful models of classroom curriculum. Speaking to the current goals of education, we see that this is a constant battle for becoming more literate in different types of instruction that are innovating ideas and way in which to educate students as best we can in the future. Having carried out our own PBI lessons and having experience with Inquiry Learning throughout our time in the Uteach program, it is a heavy topic as to whether we are realistically able to observe these methods of instruction in practice today, and how long it will be before there is a sweeping move in curriculum towards something new with different goals and objectives for students. The “hidden curriculum” held by teachers is a topic of interest that many teachers feel the need to discuss in high school. The point made was very accurate in that it is inverted in high school, and not relayed much in the lower grades. This speaks to the balance held by teachers in preparing students not only academically, but in other areas of life to be consumers of knowledge in general. A valuable comment made by a classmate and elaborated on by our teaching assistants, Sara and Tara, was that “different goals will bring along more retention and understanding in the future, and an overall goal that teachers have is for students to be better consumers of math and science as adults.” This aspect of teaching is exciting and gives more flexibility, but it has to be carefully moderated with our education goals today. As future educators, there is much to experience and learn in this aspect in order to guarantee students the most valuable education possible as adults.

The last question discussed in relation to the article was if Hmelo ignored any claims made in the Kirschner article. Many students pointed out very key ideas in the article, such as the idea of “acting like a scientist” and how that fosters learning to be a scientist and the aspect of adapting knowledge and making is meaningful to students in the classroom. The first idea offered much discussion on the aspect of “acting.” Most of the class agreed that there is a great danger in students being able to act or perform, and actually not learning critical thinking skills or using their individual creativity. Also, a question posed by our TA, Sara, was “what are students getting out of the class that they can’t get online?” This was a great point to be made in today’s age of information. The point was made that we need to make information out as something more than just a collection of things.

Overall, this discussion has highlighted both sides of the arguments surrounding some aspects of PBI and Inquiry Learning. The rest of the class time was devoted to further developing our Legacy Cycle projects.

Class 20: 11/08/11-Anchor Videos

Anchor Videos Website:

http://www.edb.utexas.edu/anchorvideo/theory.php

Goals of the Day:

1. Anchor Video

2. Hmelo-silver et al. Reading – Scaffolding and Achievement in Problem-Based and Inquiry Learning: A response to Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006)

3. Hand back field reflection papers

We started off the discussion by talking about anchor videos. Just a quick recap—anchor videos introduce the challenge (the driving question), it is the first of many steps in the creation of a Legacy cycle.

Anchor Videos Website:

http://www.edb.utexas.edu/anchorvideo/theory.php

The above website is definitely worth checking out, if you have any questions or are completely clueless when it comes to anchor videos. It is easily laid out into the following categories; Theory, History, How to, and Archive. The Archive section is under construction, but should be up and running very shortly! The Archive displays student made anchor videos. (Don’t worry—there are still examples posted under the “How to” section.)

It was heavily emphasized that a launch video is NOT an anchor video! A launch video is often shown to start a lesson (like an anchor video), however, anchor videos are used to scaffold and introduce a deeper question. Anchor videos are made to bring a sense of “apprentice learning” to the classroom. Apprenticeships are expensive and limited, put have proved to be a successful way to gain understanding. However, the anchor video incorporates technology to bring this sense of apprenticeship to the classroom. The problems are situated in real world application and often require the students to” think like an expert.” Anchor videos can also provide equity in diverse classroom setting. They are engaging and allow students that are poor readers to understand the task at hand.

The successful implication of anchor videos and furthermore Legacy Cycles require the students to work through the problems differently, but they also require many changes on the teachers part. As a teacher, you can have to allow for flexibility in the lesson plan. The lesson plan cannot be scripted; it is often times student thoughts that fuel the direction of the discussion. This is does not mean that the lesson does not require preparation before entering the classroom because it definitely needs a flexible structure. It is often hard to see a student struggle to come up with ideas, or to brainstorm ways to implement their ideas, but this is an important part of the learning process. The teacher needs to stray away from being the main provider of information and instead take on a coaching role full of encouraging words. The teacher is oftentimes learning along side the students depending on the facet the students chose to take. It can be very engaging to the teacher as well as to the students. It is especially important to remember that Legacy Cycles are an “alternate teaching methods” and therefore need to incorporate the existing curriculum and mandated standards!

The “How to” page on the website shows how to design an anchor video. There are six design principles that should be considered and incorporated while planning. A screen shot from the website is shown below. It lays out the six design principles concisely.

The term “Generativity” was brought into our discussion. In generativity, the students actually engage in developing the problems and sub-problems to solve by drawing references out of anchor videos. This is active constructivism. The learner is involved in creating their own learning.

Anchor videos are meant to portray real life problems and tasks. Therefore, not all of the data included in the video needs to be relevant to solving the problem. This is an ideal that stems from math problems—the students usually find a way to use all of the numbers given to them in a word problem. However, the students need to learn how to sort out important information- this is one more way that the problems become real world. The real world never presents us with all the information we need, nor does it present us with only the information we need.

The narrative structure in the video helps navigate the complexity and outline of the topic. Anchor videos often present us with problems that are 12-16 steps long.

NOT ALL ANCHOR VIDEOS ARE CREATED EQUALLY IN STRUCTURE- but it doesn’t mean there not all right! An overview of the example structure from the website are listed below, you can also watch them for yourself from the Anchor video website.

1. Scientists in Action: It is very structured anchor video with questions given throughout the video. They use a 1st person narrative to appear to be directly talking to you (the watcher of the video/ or in many cases the students).

2. Jasper: This video is structures and presents the challenges at the end

3. Golden Idol: This video is structured with questions given at the end. It should be noted that this is one of the first anchor videos ever made. A very distinctive shot of the graduated cylinder is shown, this is not by accident – it provides the kids a data source they can refer to in developing their solution.

4. Mission to Mars: This video is very unstructured. It is a design technique that allows the students to generate own questions/problems for their mission to mars. The instructed nature makes the video very adaptable. This same video has been used with elementary school students (3rd and 4th graders), middle school students, high students, and graduate students (Vanderbilt and Wisconsin). A child asks what happens if you run out of food, fuel, or oxygen (catastrophic) You can shift the questions from “What happens if you run out of food?” to a more complex question such as “how much food will you need?” These are very different questions with very different answers and methods to solve them.

A few tips from Dr. Petrosino we’re given at the end. He advocates for good sound quality over good picture quality. He also suggested that anchor videos should be between 3-5 minutes, this is mainly because any longer can be difficult to maintain the attention of the viewers. Of course it is essential to include the six anchor video design principles!

Our discussion of Anchor videos ended up being so in depth and included viewing a couple of the examples listed above, that we ran out of time to discuss the reading for today.

The class concluded by returning our student field experience papers. The last five or so minutes of class were available to discuss our legacy cycle and anchor video ideas with out design partners!

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class. Today’s blog is brought to you by Lauren B­­­.

Class 19: 11/03/11-UTeach Portfolio

(Portfolio Link)

Today, class started out with our master teacher, Prudie, going over portfolio logistics such as naming attachments properly, highlighting parts of lessons you want the grader to see, and leaving no doubt in the graders mind that you understand the requirement. She provided us with two handouts: a check list for us to use and a list of all the sections we are required to have complete for the preliminary portfolio. Sarah informed us that if we remembered doing an activity in a UTeach class we can write about it without having any artifacts from it, although it’s best to have artifacts.

After the 35 minute discussion over the portfolio, Dr. Petrisino took over class. He first gave us five minutes to discuss the portfolio with classmates. Once this was over there was a class discussion about the reading we had for Thursday by Kirschner, Sweller & Clark. One student started the discussion with a recap of the article. She said that the article claims that inquiry based learning affects working memory instead of long-term memory. She believes that working memory affects long term memory and most likely will store into your long term memory. Dr. Petrisino had a list on the document camera and the first thing written down was: Cognitive Argument- Long-term memory Vs. short-term memory.

Another student went on to say that the authors said PBI is too focused on the scientific process. The authors realize this is an effective way to learn, but is it necessary all the time? The next bullet on Dr. Petrisino’s list was: Process over content/Disciplinary learning.

Another Student pointed out that the argument went along with the Expert Blind Spot argument. After this a student pointed out that benefits from PBI vary among students based on whether they are lower ability or higher ability students.

A big conversation starter that was mentioned was the fact that PBI students didn’t do so well on assessments in school, but once in Medical school they did well on their clinicals. Dr. Petrisino criticized different types of assessment. If it’s a good assessment, then it will not test the type of instruction. PBI tries to tie in factual, transfer, and conceptual concepts and relate them to real world experiences. Direct instruction is not a bad thing, but there is a time and place. He then gave an example about the students doing the rocket experiment. The students needed to be guided when they reached a dead end so they called in an expert that gave a lecture.

Class was cut short today and this was the last thing that had been discussed. All the other bullets on Dr. Petrisino’s list followed from the discussions by the students during class time.

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class. Today’s blog is brought to you by Stephanie­­­.