Connecting School and Home Experiences

After reflecting about the experiences I have had with my discipline, I have chosen two that will illustrate best how they have affected me and will affect my teaching. The first deals with Legos and the second is with a bicycle. Growing up I always remember having Legos to play with. There are the family blocks, which are still enjoyed today by my kids and their cousins. And then there is my own collection that I slowly accumulated as time went on. In any case I would spend countless hours huddled over the piles of plastic looking for the piece that is just the right size to complete that flying car or boat or castle. How satisfying it was to finish, and even more so if it survived long enough to show it off to mom and dad.

When I was involved as a Boy Scout, there were many labor intensive activities that I participated in to earn various merit badges. The longest for me was the 50 mile bike ride. I had my trusty Huffy bike to carry me the distance. It was green, had horns, and was a 15 speed. As my troop made our way along the Jordan River Trail, I utilized the different setting to compensate for the change in terrain. Several flat tires and a few sore back sides latter, we all completed the feat.

The way that these two examples may have affected the way that I think about my major is because in both cases I used aspects of what I will teach to accomplish a goal. On the bike ride I used gear ratios to make peddling easier. The bike itself is full of simple machines like levers, screws and of course the wheel and axle. And Legos taught me about structural integrity and about the engineering design process.

I know that these experiences will influence my teaching because they already have. Last Spring I taught a few lessons to high school students as part of an independent study course. One of the days I taught was about simple machines. For that lesson, I actually brought my bicycle into the room and used it to teach with. Showing them how shifting the front and back sprockets of the bike changed the ratio of how many times the peddle rotated compared with the rotation of the wheel. As for Legos and the engineering design process, you can ask the Ag students in our class about the “tractors” that they had to make as an activity that I lead to illustrate said process. After they were give the problem, it was up to their groups to brainstorm a solution, build and test a prototype, and demonstrate its’ capability. This was down by using special Lego kits. In the end, it comes down to teaching students new concepts using thing they are already familiar with as a reference point.

I do not know who this is, but a bike made out of Legos just seems fitting.

Teaching for Understanding

In my methods class, we had a lesson about teaching for understanding. The professor talked about what he referred to as the Twin Sins. That is, being coverage-focused and being activity-focused. The first, coverage-focused, is when you are blasting through information, covering one chapter after another. It doesn't matter if the students actually get any of it, but you have to keep moving. The other, activity-focused, is doing those “time honored” projects. The kids don’t know why they are doing them; you don’t know why they are doing them. It is simply what was always done, so you do it. It is having an activity just for the sake of having an activity. I felt that was important because it leads to a process of focusing on what the students need to learn and developing activities that support those learning objectives.

            The other thing that I will point out from that lesson is about misconceptions. But before I go any further, you need to watch this video. Not the whole thing, just through the mirror portion. Scroll down and click the VoD box that is by the “can we believe our eyes?” paragraph.

            http://www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid=76

            Crazy right! There is teaching knowledge, and then there is teaching understanding. I feel that we can no longer present the information and have that be enough. We must teach students how to apply it in their life (hey that sounds like Bloom’s Taxonomy stuff). One thing that stood out to me was what they said about teaching kids based off their experiences vs. teaching them like they are a blank slate. “It seems obvious”. It is amazing to me how we can go through life confident that we know what is going on, when it turns out, we don’t even know how a mirror works. The main reason we were shown this video is so that we would understand that we have to identify and correct misunderstandings of our students. 

Integrating Information Technology into the Classroom

   After reflecting on my connection to information technology, I have come to the conclusion that I need to get more involved in the opportunities that are at my fingertips. I say this because I consider myself distant from popular things used by this and the upcoming generation. Namely, I do not have a smart phone with a data plan. I do not tweet, I avoid texting when I can. And, believe it or not, I really don’t facebook. However, I am not completely cut off from this digital age. I am compelled by school to log into canvas in order to check grades, submit assignments, etc. But the computer is not all business for me. I enjoy using it for entertainment (Hulu and Netflix), I even buy some things online. Aside from google searches to find resources for school, I can’t think of any “texts” that I read. Mostly because I do not like reading things on the computer.

   Clearly I have a lot of ground to make up if I hope to connect with my future students. One thing that I have seen done that I like is having a class blog. I can have a calendar that contains things like lessons, assignments, and due dates. This way students can go right there any time they have a question. They don’t have to ask in class or wait for me to respond through an e-mail. Also I would post things we are doing as a class. Maybe even have the students post things to promote involvement. With the vast amount of information available through the internet, I could assign readings that come from websites instead of a book. In case I have students that are unfamiliar with the process of posting something online, I would make sure to have instructions available to help them through it. I have also seen Google Docs used in school to allow students to turn in some assignments and to collaborate on group homework.

   In the end there is no getting away from the incorporation of information technology, so I know that becoming familiar with it myself is a critical step to creating an environment that my students will want to learn in.

Hello fellow 4200 classmates, and welcome to my Blog. My name is Tyler Cook. My major is TEE (Technology and Engineering Education) or more commonly recognized as “Shop”. Although there are a lot of different courses I am trained to teach (Auto-mechanics, Woods, CAD, Construction, Introduction to engineering, etc.) what I will ideally teach would be Manufacturing Processes/ CIM classes. Whatever that means, right? Think of a metals shop plus robots! CIM stands for Computer Integrated Manufacturing. So along with teaching my students how to operate equipment such as lathes and molds, I would also have a CNC mill that they could write and run a program to etch their initials into a piece of metal. Another example would be building a robot and creating a program for it to complete a simple task like scooping up some bean bags and dumping them into a trough.

There are two main reasons that contributed to myself entering the TEE program. The first is that I had a great experience in the metal shop classes I took in high school. I enjoyed making things. Because of that, I wanted to pursue a career in mechanical engineering. However, after a few semesters of mediocre grades and a terrible time, my friend introduced me to the TEE major. Later I realized that I had not succeeded because I had a different learning style that is completely ignored in the introductory courses offered by the engineering department. With them it was all lecture, reading and writing. The way I learn is more kinesthetic, hands on. I learn by doing. The TEE program is a perfect match for me. It is all project based learning.

That leads into what this discipline means to me. It is a way of teaching, a way to help students succeed, in school outside the normal means of educating. My hope is that my class will be a place where the kids that “just don’t learn” can experience success and show that they can achieve academically. So my students actually become literate in one facet of technology. Often when we are asked about being literate, we automatically think about reading, writing, and proper English. But that is being literate in English. I would argue that you can be literate in anything, like the gaming example from class. He clearly knew what he was doing in reference to the game he liked to play. For technology, I believe that being literate means that you can use, manage, maintain, and assess technology.