HiI'm a CS and Sociology senior. I'm graduating this summer. I'm going into the peace corps next year. Eventually I'd like to teach elementary school; probably 3rd or 4th grade.contact:cmagill@gmail.comAssignmentsAssignment 13Assignment 12 Assignment 10 Assignment 9 Assignment 8 Assignment 6 Assignment 5 Assignment 4 Assignment 3 Assignment 2 Assignment 1 Independent ResearchThe following are books I read this semester which relate to topics we've seen in the Design, Learning, and Collaboration class. The last 2 are most directly related to learning by doing, the topic of our group's research:
I took the independent research portion of this class as an opportunity to read this book in part because I had read The Web of Life for another class which Hal was involved in, along with Ernie Arias. The Hidden Connections turned out to be less relevant to the topic of learning than Capra's earlier book, which was disappointing. You can read a longer summary and review of The Web of Life by downloading the document you'll find at the other end of this link: http://grackle.colorado.edu:4242/envd4363/uploads/44/
Also see this speech by Postman, Informing Ourselves to Death
gameThe idea for this game was motivated by one of the examples of Critical Barriers to science learning from David Hawkins' essay. Most people (85% in Hawkins' informal experiments) cannot correctly answer a question which asks them to predict where a certain object will appear in a mirror. The intention of this game is that it lead students into developing a robust understanding of one elementary concept (angle of incidence equals angle of reflection) while introducing a number of other geometrical terms and concepts.Two children play the game in front of one computer; they cooperate to solve certain problems, and compete to solve others. The game proceeds through a series of activities with earlier activities aimed at exposing students' misconceptions about mirror vision and supplying a simple, correct explanation, and later activities aimed at helping students generalize from the the correct explanation and connect it to other geometric concepts/terms they may know. Each activity proceeds through a repeating sequence of sub-activities, with each subactivity characterized by particular visual elements and a distinct POV (which would be easier to draw than to describe, if only I could draw). The game will be implemented in flash, in the familiar mock-3d style, except for the abstract-math POV, which will be simple rendered 3-d movies. The very first subactivity might show students their two avatars (player-icons) from the rear, standing on a line parallel to and facing a wall, and require the students to place a mirror on the wall so that the avatars would be able to see each other in it. The students successfully complete this subactivity when they place the mirror at the midpoint between the two avatars. When that happens the POV changes to a first-person view from each avatar in turn, looking into the mirror and at the other's face, this POV gives the student a visual verification that their solution is correct. The third POV is an abstract-math-view in which students see their avatars in a 3-d cartesian space which rotates to a direct overhead view and draws in the angles formed by the avatars and mirror, highlighting for the first time the basic fact the game is trying to teach: angle of incidence equals angle of reflection. Finally, the POV returns to 3rd-person rear and the students repeat a different version of the first problem. All the activities follow the same pattern of four subactivities–first a 3rd-person view for playing a game or solving a problem, then 2nd-person view for checking the solution, then an abstract view for illustrating the underlying concept, and finally back to the playing-a-game view. Each activity after the first builds a little more complexity into the problems and explanations. For example, the second activity might give students a room with a fixed mirror and ask them to take turns moving their avatars left to right until they can see each other–in this case the mirror will still end up directly in the middle, but now the first student's choice influences her teammate's choice (and depending on where the first student places her avatar the point on the line where its reflection is visible might not even be on the screen, if that happens the "verification" point of view should make that clear). A third activity would allow the students to place their avatars anywhere on the plane of the floor to find each other in a fixed (or movable) mirror; freedom in the depth dimension will mean that the mirror will no longer generally be at the midpoint of the horizontal interval the avatars delimit; the abstract-math section for this activity should emphasize that it is the equality of the angles, rather than the horizontal distance, that remains constant. The abstract math POV is also an opportunity for the game to model the use of geometric ideas such as parallel and perpendicular lines, complementary angles, midpoint, and the cartesian plane. Subsequent activities can continue to explore the concept of reflection and build the students grasp of the associated geometry by modifying one element at a time in each new activity: adding a third dimension of freedom (height), adding a second mirror, facing players in different directions, adding obstacles, round mirrors...? Each activity should go pretty fast and present an interesting puzzle. Course projectlink to the STRONG swiki see in particular the assessment pages, which were my contribution to the implementation.
|
