By Ramón Talavera Franco
So far we have explored some educational terminology along
the course: constructivism, constructionism, deep learning, and active
learning, and our assignments, course activities and intervention in the forums
are designed to explore such terminology. To do so, this week we’ve had the
opportunity to learn from diverse educational software such as Geniverse,
StarLogo Nova, and other simulation platforms that either are included in the
course by professor Klopfer or are being added by our peers in the course wikki
organized by topics. So far, students have submitted over 30 simulation
platforms links that open vast opportunities to practice the main topic of the
week: active learning.
The exploration of the above mentioned simulation platforms
is breathtaking; however, it is difficult for me to explore them all or spend
the time that I would love to spend learning all of them due to my other daily-life
activities such as job, my doctoral program assignments and lectures, my crazy
decision to register in MIT 11.126x Introduction to Game Design (great
course!), and my family. I’m mentioning this because sometimes similar factors
like mine might impact the academic performance of MOOC student.
To finish this week’s post, I wanted to share with you two
experiences. The first one is that I had a Google hangout with one of my peers
who lives in Sri Lanka. For her final
assignment she is exploring how to create small study groups within MOOCs to
maximize active learning. We contacted each other from the forums and decided
to share our views about MOOC. It was a great experience talking to her and
share our passion and different perspectives about how MOOCs might improve and
increase students’ active learning. What most impressed me from my colleague is
that she agreed to contact me at 1:00 pm (Boston time), while for her was 1:00
am in Sri Lanka!!!! On my defense, I didn’t know where she live when we decided
to have a Google hangout. It was until we started our conversation that I
realized where she lives and her time zone. It was a great experience! I’m very
grateful for the time we shared together and for the nice conversation.
The second topic that I want to address is this week’s
assignment. We had to record an elevator pitch about our final project. In my
most recent courses in my doctoral program, I’ve been exploring the need to
provide cultural relevant information to Non-Latino K-12 teachers who work with
Latino students. Therefore, I decided to take advantage of my research on that
topic and continue exploring the same topic here. The opportunity that this
course gives me to share my project through a video is an important exercise
for me. So I decided to share it with you with the hope to hear some feedback.
You can send me your feedback in the comment link at the bottom of this post.
See you next week!
Here is the link to the elevator pitch
No comments:
Post a Comment