Final+Reflection

Daniel Schmidt December 8, 2008 Ed 341 Final

**Education 341 Final Reflection**
I suppose that there are many subtle concepts or ideas that I have learned trough this course without even realizing it. Sometimes students learn these subtle concepts and then later, maybe in their own class, realize “Hey! I learned this back in one of my education classes”. So, although there are some good things I learned in this class that I will be writing about, there are many things that I have learned that I will not be writing about. However I want to express the fact that I understand this and that only experience will help me to fully appreciate the benefits of this class. There are three concepts that I really learned a lot about in this class: awareness of difficult classroom situations (i.e. teaching cases), the importance of technology in the classroom and how it use it, and constructivists teaching and learning models. Although I had some awareness of difficult classroom situations either through my own experience as a student many years ago or from teachers in my education classes, the cases we read about in this class really opened my eyes to a different level of difficult situations. The teaching cases were really difficult situations and reading responses on how to handle some of these gave me a much better idea of how to handle bad situations than I previously had. I really enjoyed talking about these situations and I think the class did as well. In fact I think we spent much more time on the in class discussion than about these than you anticipated prior to the class. However we did adjust and have some great discussions. I think in the next class these situations would be very helpful to discuss at length since they are a very real part of what future teachers will have to deal with. I know that if I got nothing else from this class the fact that I will be more prepared for some difficult situation made this class very valuable. I conjecture that some of the students from this class will not realize this until they have a difficult situation happen to them and they are able to think about what we learned in this class and handle the situation drawing on this experience. I think it would be nice if somehow you could give students that have some odd experiences a chance to share them with the class (maybe on the wiki). Of course I think anyone that is not living in a cave is aware that technology is playing a vital role in today’s society. However the way we looked at technology to solve some of the problems in the teaching cases and also using technology in our own class was great. I know that many students were apposed to the wiki space idea at the beginning but in the end using the wiki was awesome. For example when I am done with this paper I do not have to worry about handing it in or emailing it, I can put it on my wiki. This is nice because I can also go to other student’s wikis’ and look at the work they have done. Also if I forgot to write something or thought of something I needed to change I can go to my wiki and change it. So really although at first getting the hang of the wiki space was somewhat difficult, in the end it saved students a lot of headache. Also some of the ideas that we came up with to implement technology in the classroom was pretty cool. Online assignments and information was at the heart of these helpful ideas. Also using video online either for instruction or projects was really cool. How about google docs and jumpcut? What awesome tools at your fingertips. Since I am a math major it may be a little more difficult to apply some of this technology, however if you remember Reg’s inquiry project he used the internet to make a very interesting math lesson so I know it can be done. Also I have found some really great internet sites that have interactive java applets for spherical and hyperbolic geometry as well as an interactive circle equation site. The possibilities are endless. Thus this class opened my eyes to the possibilities of using technology in the classroom. The last concept that I really learned a lot about is constructivists learning models. Before this class I was very confused on what exactly constructivist learning is all about. Now I am confident that I have a good understanding of constructivist learning. The commercial helped me with this immensely. I do want to give one bit of advice about this however so your next class can be even more successful than we were. That is, I think you should explain this project a little sooner to them than you did to us because it really put me in a bind when I had to complete this project. The dynamic of the college class has changed from what it once was and there are more older students that are married with children than in previous years. That being said I found this to be a very interesting project and I would have liked to have spent some more time on this project. Research for this project was the key to my understanding of constructivist teaching and learning. Also the in class inquiry lessons demonstrated constructivist learning first hand. The inquiry projects we all did was a great learning tool because now I can draw from all of those lessons to make an even better inquiry lesson next time I present one. With all of this experience that I now have in constructivist teaching and learning I now feel no ambiguity towards constructivist learning. Before this class I did not realize that many of these models such as discovery learning, inquiry based learning, problem based learning, and so on were all constructivist in nature. I now get it and I get it because of this class. The great thing is these projects and lessons were fun and kept the class interesting. Teaching cases, technology, constructivist teaching and learning are three of the big ideas that I received from education 341. However I know there are other ideas and concepts that I have learned and some of those I will figure out only after experiencing my own classroom. Although I was frustrated in the beginning I think we (the class and Dr. Pyatt) worked it out to and had a very successful class experience! Note to Dr. Pyatt: I would like to mention one thing that I think would make this class much better in the future. I know we talked about this but I want to mention it one last time because I think it will help your future classes immensely. That is, I think that on your syllabus you need to put down every assignment that is due and an initial due date. I know that these dates may change but at least students could look in one place to see what is due. This was very confusing the first three weeks of class and we spent to much time figuring due dates out. People like me need things like this written down in this manner or it drives us nuts. Please do not get discouraged by me addressing this one last time as I feel that you were very accommodating but if I could have looked at the syllabus and knew that blank assignment was due I would have been in the **Flow** much earlier in this class. By the way, if all I have to complain about is one thing then you should feel pretty good about that! Thank you for a great class and the opportunity to gain all of those experiences from our various lessons and projects. Dan Schmidt