CEP800
Instructor: Dr. Danah Henriksen and Dr. Leigh Wolf
Semester: Summer 2012
This class was helpful to me, because I do not teach in a school setting, so it was useful to see how children learn outside of school, as well as in. We discussed how children come to any situation with previous conceptions - unlike what many teachers would wish, children are not blank slates. Before they may learn new things, their previous conceptions must be addressed. Sometimes these previous conceptions are solid foundations to build upon, but sometimes they're misconceptions - things students have pieced together themselves, in inaccurate ways. We also discussed different theories of learning, and different ways children learn, including observational learning, situated learning, and social constructivism.
A few of my assignments for this class were posted directly to this blog. Included are an interview project, a digital story project, a lesson plan and a reflection. The interview project is looking at what different students and individuals think about how the internet works - it's examining their previous conceptions. This is the kind of investigative work that must begin any unit, for a teacher to find out about his or her students' previous conceptions. The digital story project is exploring how I taught a group of my students to improvise, and what that means for their playing and their learning. The lesson plan and reflection are looking at my work on introducing technology to my teaching with one student.