Visualize

"Visualize"

Chen, P., & McGrath, D. (2004). Visualize, Visualize, Visualize: Designing projects for higher order thinking. Learning & Leading with Technology, 32(4), 54-57.

I agree with the article that the first step in students really being able to understand material is to get them past the point of just spitting out the knowledge to where they can begin to see the connections and reasons why the knowledge is important. Since I plan on teaching math and science at the high school level one of the things that I already do and that the article mentioned is to give the students the ability to see my (the teacher’s) thought process while approaching and solving a problem. Hopefully this will give them some idea to the way they should be thinking about and visualizing a problem. The way that I most often do this is to have my students watch me solve a problem while telling them my thinking process (why I am doing each step).

Project based learning is when students have to think about what they are doing and why. The teacher is not looking for a specific answer so much as they are looking to see that the students are thinking about what they are doing and what it means.

An example of higher order thinking would be giving students a problem they have not seen before and asking them to think about their previous knowledge of similar problems and predict the outcome of this new unknown problem. And even better would be having the students not just give a prediction but making them write out or give evidence to support why they made it.

Here are two additional articles that talk about project based learning (PBL)

The first article gives two different points of view; one supporting and one against using PBL in the classroom. The author arguing against PBL claims that it takes too much time and energy to use in the classroom for so little results. Basically that PBL is not an efficient method for teachers to use on a regular basis. The author arguing in favor of PBL claims that it gives students more opportunities to collaborate with each other as well as thinking about and solving complicated problems. The second article is more practical and gives a list of places where interested teachers can find out more about just how to implement PBL in their own classrooms. It lists several different resources as well as giving a short summary of each.

Article 1
Scott, K., & Thompson, S. (2007). Point-Counterpoint: Is PBL practical? . Learning and Leading with Technology, 35(1), 8-9.

Article 2
McGrath, D. (2007). Pump yourself up with PBL learning . Learning and Leading with Technology, 31(4), 32-34.

If the links don’t work you might have to log into the ISTE website and find them there they are L&L volume 35 issue 1 and L&L volume 31 issue 4 respectively.