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This screenshot shows a wall at Mavericks High School, Sunrise Campus, in Fort Lauderdale, Feb 2011
Dr. Fischler toured the school and gave us some stories and observations.
Highlights of the training
Fischler wrote about Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI)
There are three modes of instruction: 1) self-paced or CAI, 2) project or problem-solving and 3) discussion. The teacher can pose a project or problem that is relevant to the student. Once the problem is defined, the class can be broken down into groups of 4-5 students in order to research the solution to the problem.
Students working in groups learn cooperation, shared responsibility and communication (face-to-face as well as e-mail) to produce a written solution. They can then present the project to the class for discussion.
KEY IDEA: To get deeper learning, students need to do projects and discussions.
Teacher: Students don’t want to take time to do a project because that will slow down their progress through the course. Part of our problem is that the reward system is based on how many quizzes the student can complete in a day.
Fischler: Those quizzes measure very simple levels of comprehension.
There's not much analysis, there's not much synthesis. There's not much debate and argument.
The computer system instruction is the easiest level.
We learn the new information for a quiz through the self-paced CAI.
By adding projects and discussions, the students go back and deepen their learning
One of the challenges we have is that students are at different levels for the discussions
As the teacher, you purposely form the group and through the project you accommodate for the variations of where the students are. You differentiate through the responsibility that you give to each student in pieces.
Someone who is a good reader could head up the research part of the project. If someone is a poor reader you don't give him so much reading. You give him something simpler for him to contribute, to bring back to the project so you differentiate responsibility.
When we were kids in the street we chose sides. The two best guys never played on the same team. That is the only way you can have a good game.
Some groups for some projects are a little larger and there's always room for the student at the bottom, so that every student can participate in the interactions.
I call that “developing the soft skills.” How do we prepare students for life? Projects and discussions. When students get out of here, they're probably not going to work by themselves. They'll be working with a group doing something.
What kind of projects do they do at school? That's where the creativity of the teachers and the students comes together. You can't have the students sitting 4 hours a day, just sitting with computer assisted instruction. I call that the Model T Ford, like the first car factory.
The Model T car runs, but it's not going to get you very far. In the same way, students need more than simply computer assisted instruction.
We need to combine the CAI with other groupings to help students see how “what they are learning” is related to “what's going on” in the world. That's where the creativity of the teacher comes in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e4ktNTNVZM Video on YouTube
Short link: www.TINYURL.COM/sunCAI1
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