BSIE 2010 Week 3 Observations

This week’s opening discussion about accepting diversity/problems before working toward unity/a solution was an appropriate one. Many of this summer’s participants have encountered problems when dealing with school administrators who are the “authority” on classroom management and techniques, even though they have not interacted enough with individual children on a personal basis to know that not all management styles work for every student. This kind of “authority problem” is often treated as just that: a problem. However, it should be seen as just another bit of diversity in an effort to create new dialogue out of conflicting views. Acknowledging that the opinions of those in higher positions are important to the process of making a learning environment more comfortable is only one step toward a workable solution. It is just as important that administrators realize the power a teacher holds over the impressionable minds of their students, as well as how classroom environment can so greatly impact these minds. As the Institute’s participants learned from Dr. Grobstein, the brain thrives on those ideas that conflict with preconceived notions in order to create new understanding. It is of the utmost importance that educators share this knowledge with their supervisors and administrators so as to provide not only a personal, emotional basis for their opinions, but a scientific one as well. 

Guest-lecturer presentations this week varied greatly in their technique used to capture the attention of Institute participants and apply knowledge to a hands-on activity. Greg Davis’ presentation about the impact of genes and morphogens on patterns in butterfly wing spots began with a list of learning objectives, something to which I am still assigning merits and shortcomings. The list, in many ways, gives structure to a lesson and provides a goal (a common purpose?) for the class to anticipate reaching. But does this predetermined set of bullet points allow for less “free flow” and thus hinder the natural stream of consciousness that runs through students’ minds? Learning objectives aside, Dr. Davis made good use of class opinions in answering questions and devising hypothetical experiments to test the effect of varying levels of genes on different aspect of camouflage spots. His hands-on activity was not truly “hands-on,” but rather small group work based on information displayed on the white board. Personally, I feel this is why some participants did not fully understand his material at the end of the presentation. He would have benefited from using an activity that allowed participants to make their own connections by altering the levels of some physical substance, not just colors on a piece of paper, as well as a brief overview of vocabulary words that were used frequently in the lesson.

The premise of Paul Burgmayer’s lesson plan—to use storytelling as a means of understanding the Bohr atomic model—was beautifully simple: allow participants to take their personal experience, shape it into a creative explanation for something microscopic and abstract (something the brain already does!) through collaborative effort and share with the rest of the class. Aside from boiling down a confusing idea into something much more manageable, the group work required to create these “atomic stories” was fruitful in that it allowed participants to learn from each other and see the material from a different perspective. Dr. Burgmayer’s use of video, as well as his short review session before the actual lecture began, was helpful as well. I had no trouble following his presentation, but judging by the survey taken halfway through showing that not many of the participants felt the same way, I can safely say that this was because I had recently taken an advanced chemistry course. In order to let the material truly sink in for those with little to no chemistry background, Dr. Burgmayer should have slowed down his lesson a bit.

Rebecca Vandiver’s presentation on cooling rates in relation to cougar hunting was both interesting and literally “hands-on.” There is something about making an idea tangible that really cements it in the minds of students and teachers alike, as we saw when Institute participants were allowed to work with tubes of warm water soaked in a bath of ice. Making the ideas on the worksheet into something they could touch and physically manipulate, as well as translating a mathematical concept into something “real-world” related (bringing it from the abstract to the concrete), was a great way to get the participants involved and let them bring their own experience to the table/make their own conclusions. It also helped that Dr. Vandiver stressed how there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to math modeling—just experimentation and observation. However, no matter how interactive the activity proved, there was still much angst at the end of the lesson because of the material’s connection to mathematics (a subject many students, not just Institute participants, dread). This conflict raised many questions:

·         Why is it that some students seemingly just can’t learn a particular subject, no matter how hard they try?

·         Is learning a universal capability, and to what extent?

·         Does culture/background play a role in how students learn certain subjects?

·         Should we be calling “math” something else? And if so, should this be considered academic dishonesty?

The most rewarding part of the week came in the last two days, when Institute participants presented their own material (based off of the “mini projects” that they had been working on for the last three weeks) to the group in a way that mirrored the open-ended, co-constructive inquiry we had been discussing throughout the program. To see what we had been presenting come full circle was truly gratifying, and I now realize why teaching is considered such an emotionally rewarding career. Most of the participants who presented their projects did so in a way that allowed for hands-on, interactive learning and group discussion (a couple presentations even provided edible incentives). It seemed as though a few were lacking conversation amongst the entire group and were still leaning toward the lecture-based, one-sided end of the spectrum, but overall they incorporated what participants had gleaned from the Institute in their own way.