The Web as a Source of Educational Experiences

Following are the students comments, as they originally appeared in the course forum area:

Unfortunately, I was slightly confused by the other two links. I found the directions to be initially unclear, and I wonder what students (grade/age level) these were made to teach. The actual experiments themselves were much fun and interactive. Having them online allows individuals the opportunity to alter various parameters and see the new results. Additionally, students may reproduce experiments and try to draw conclusions from their data. I greatly enjoyed how the links introduced topics, gave clear explanations, and then the experiments solidified their point(s) while leading students to ask more questions. The links listed on these sites may allow students the chance to continue their exploration indefinitely and allows them to follow a 'choose-your-own-adventure' course for learning. They may study those questions and areas which spark their interest.

What was most interesting was that if none of the other countries had gotten involved, than the two countries at war (who had equal point values) would have had a stalemate and the war would have been over. Instead, each country took a side, and their little imaginary world erupted in war. Prisoner's Dilemma, it seems, would serve to help teach the same lesson. If you chose to continue cooperating, neither side will lose points and the two sides will remain tied. It is only when one side gets greedy and decides to cheat in order to obtain more points that both sides start to lose.

I think that this is an interesting and important lesson for children to learn, although I think the site could have been just a tad bit more exciting. If the student choses to cooperate, then the game is very boring. Other than that, though, the students can learn that sometimes cooperation is the best strategy, even though it might mean that they can never win.

I have mixed feelings about how this would play out with young children. I am placed in a second grade classroom and I see varying levels of logical thinking and similar strengths. As one who believes firmly in multiple intelligences, I am skeptical as to whether or not a child would be able to pick up on the logical pattern and if they could actually learn the skill from the exercise. The reason why I feel this way is that each week, the class is given a problem of the week, more or less a logic problem (frequently math), to solve by Thursday when it is reviewed. When I come in Thursday morning, the same children are struggling with the exerice, even if they were given an easier one. I feel that I am left with more questions then before. Will these exercises only reinforce skills that students already have or will they actually teach them to the students? Can these skills be learned or to they have to be taught in a more structured manner? What about children whose strengths lie elsewhere? How self directed should these exercises be? I guess on some levels I am frustrated because I see these experiences somewhat limited, especially for younger children.

I tried out the game "Prisoner's Dilemma". It seemd like a great way to get students thinking about complicated concepts (math in particular it seemed), but the activity would need to be well-thought-out and geared towards the needs of the students.

This activity might be suitable in a high school classroom if the students were used to having complicated, "thinking" problems posed to them. Otherwise, I think it would be overwhelming for them to have to explore so deeply- they wouldn't know where to start (I even had a hard time). I think there's potential to make an excellent inquiry project out of it (and similar activities), but I think the students would need to be prefaced with something more mild- they would need to gradually build up skills and confidence. This seems like an activity that would come near the year's end when students have acquired more complex thinking skills that would help them make this activity worthwhile.

So, other things I would do in addition to this activity would be "prep" activities that would gradually allowed students to think and analyze more on their own. Perhaps having guiding questions set up in order to help students structure their thoughts.... I don't know- it would depend on the class and where they were "skill-wise". Are they comfortable thinking through things and trying to figure problems out themselves? If not, they may panic and the degree to which different students would need guidance may differ. This activity would work well as a group project I think. Especially if it were possible to arrange students according to the ways in which they think they learn... there would then be multiple perspectives and different approaches to the entire activity. That, in itself, would be a learning experience.

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