Today in EDUC 504 we were look enough to take a part of a "soft opening" of the brand new Brandon Center in the School of Education. The Brandon Center is a new collaboration center with beautiful meetings areas and tools for active collaboration. I can see how the way the individual spaces are arranged encourage active and open discussion of ideas.
For our activity today, we were broken up into groups 4 and 5 according to teaching major and with one librarian. Our librarian Addie was an absolute asset today. She brought some interesting ideas and perspectives to our activity. It was great she could take our overarching goals of creating a lesson plan to have students become educated consumers of energy, learn about nuclear energy, and alternative energy options; and create a coherent and well planned out lesson plan. Her idea of having students create person facebook profiles of an individual nuclear plant was absolutely genius. It will allow students to learn the basics of nuclear power, the different forms of nuclear power plants in America, the politics of nuclear power, and the reasons why some power plants are built near bodies of water and some aren't. The facebook page will also teach students to use social networking in a fun and educational manner. I am going to have to remember this lesson for my own teaching in the future.
After the lesson plan activity, the groups got together to discuss other matters such as classroom management that can effect the power of lessons. One idea we discussed was how to arrange classroom to make group work more manageable and less disruptive and noisy. I thought the idea of putting tennis balls on the legs of tables was very interesting. They would make moving tables more quiet and less disruptive to classroom activities.
I also thought the discussion on how to arrange students in groups was interesting. When I GSI'ed chemistry at Michigan, I made it a point to create lab groups with a range of abilities and personalities. I found groups work much better if all team members are able to make valuable contributions and bring their own strengths to the group. In my six terms of teaching at Michigan, I have only had to break up one group and it was due to a serious health risk two members were posing because of their screwing around.
Superb reflection. Glad it was such a rich experience!
ReplyDeleteThe facebook lesson plan you pose is interesting. I'm not entirely sure I understand how it works from your description, though. Could you go into a bit more detail about how it allows students to learn more about nuclear power plants?
ReplyDeleteSure. The lesson we are proposing is that we have each group select a power plant in the United States. They will fill out a personal facebook for it (so the plant is like a person). They will have to research the plant to understand what other plants it is related to (built on a similar design and generation), what power plants to friend (ones that are similar, but perhaps it won't friend a power plant that is a generation newer), friend politicians that support nuclear power. Students will also create a list of the power plants "Likes." So a power plant could like: uranium 235, cold water, lead, politicians that support nuclear power, nuclear physics. This lesson will allow students to synthesize information to create a new product, rather than just copying down information from the NRC and wikipedia. It will also allow students to analyze the current political environment of nuclear power.
ReplyDeleteWow, I love the facebook idea! Now that is a really original way to use technology in the classroom. It also sounds like it would be fun and educational.
ReplyDeleteJosh, maybe you and I can plan a lesson around the forces of water for another assignment this year. I'm sure we will have plenty of chances! I put the resources on my blog from our reading assignment from the day before class for reference if you are ever interested.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that so many of us liked the idea of the tennis balls! There are so many teacher tips that are helpful that we haven't learned yet!
Great reflection of the class! I have to say that the facebook idea sounds awesome! It sounds like you have really thought it through and it would have some positive educational benefits. I'd love to see it played out and hear how it goes if you implement it one day in your class!
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