BLOG 3

BLOG: CHAPTER 3 AND CHAPTER 9

Chapter 3 talked mainly talked about student’s active learning which could refer to the idea of teaching approach “student-centered”. By using this approach, teacher is supposed to create more situations for students to participate in minds-on problem solving and thoughtful reflection. As is well known John Dewey is the pioneer of the progressivism theory, and his conception has a very great influence on today’s teaching models. In recent years, I think more and more teachers have moved toward a student-centered approach, because the world is keep changing, students should seek answers through their experiential learning. Since I have experienced “teacher-centered” educational theory through out my complete childhood in China, and some students and teachers believe it is the most effective strategy. However, I know there are many disadvantages under this approach. For a example, it does not allow students to express themselves, ask questions and direct their own learning. I do believe the old saying: “ every coins has two sides”, when I go to observe some student-centered learning classrooms, I also find some problems. The teacher does not deliver instruction to all students at once, some students may miss important facts. 

I would like to say the student-centered education never means that teachers do not lecture. It is to create a student-centered learning classroom on the basis of teacher’s instruction. Teacher’s instruction can also be an important part of a course when the student-centered learning is the main theory, so teacher-centered and learner centered teaching can be a series. Students may have questions at the very beginning, but the student centered lesson will make teacher to become a resource for explaining, demonstrating, and clarifying precisely for all aspects to meet each student’s need. The students now can ask, instead of demanding them "listen and learn."

For chapter 9, it presented ways of multimedia technologies, which combined with text, data, voice, pictures, and video. Video is more widely used in today’s classroom to present information from teacher to student. A good video could inspire student’s learning desire. For my personal experience, that was my college English literature professor used many video clips to help students to learn Shakespeare and his works that really helped us to remember partial boring texts, and it became more visually and vividly. Videos could help teacher extend their curriculum beyond the limits of textbook, besides of this, teacher also can pause and rewind to come up with questions or reinforce knowledge from remembering key points. I think there are a lot of multimedia technologies could be used in our classrooms for helping kids to learn knowledge. And I would happy to try to see how my students react with those active learning methods. 

Questions:

1.What are the essential elements for teacher to do to facilitate a student-centered classroom?

2.what’s your education philosophy? why do you prefer it?