Week #3 in CEDO 525

The Use of Advance Organizers…

This week we read an article by D. Ausubel titled “The Use of Advance Organizers in the Learning and Retention of Meaningful Verbal Material”.  Although the article was from 1960, it still had a lot of good points buried in its verbose presentation.  Students will always retain information better when they have a framework under which to attach that new knowledge to pre-existing knowledge.  The article goes on to advocate the use of organizers, such as concept maps, to get students to attach the new material you are presenting to them to the prior knowledge they already have.  Students can make remarkable gains when they have the proper tools in front of them to synthesize the information you present into their own knowledge

Maps Alive!

Also this week we watched a podcast from the Temple City Unified School District entitled “Maps Alive!”.  The amount of polish put into the first pod cast was impressive and the two high lighted concept maps, flow maps and “Write from the Beginning”, were useful.  The podcast gave an overview of the use of each type of map and then proceeded to show multiple examples being used in the elementary schools of the Temple City Unified School District.  It was useful to see how these teachers modified the standard flow map for their own uses in Science and English.  I am considering implementing a modified flow map for our study of electricity production for my Science 9 students and with the examples shown in the podcast I feel pretty confident that my students would benefit from the use of the organizer.

Compare and Contrast 3 Online Tools

	MindMeister	Webspiration	exploratree
Url:	www.mindmeister.com	www.mywebspiration.com	www.exploratree.org.uk
Cost	3 maps free or $59/yr	30 days free or $39/yr	Free (in Beta)
Use	Creation of text based concept maps	Creation of graphics based concept maps	Creation of many different types of concept maps
Strengths	*Very quick to create maps * Can hide/show subtopics via a “+/-“ button * works across multiple platforms such as smart phones and ipads	* Has lots of built in graphics to use with the program *Click and drag interface is easy to create concept maps	* Drag and drop interface is very intuitive. * Easy to send and share concept maps
Weaknesses	* Importation of graphics is difficult * Runs on an old javascript that crashed frequently on my laptop	* Loading time for each tool was rather slow * saving multiple maps was a pain as was trying to share out a specific map	* Templates available were rather static and resisted changes made * No offline storage method available
Final Verdict	Skip it.  Not worth the money or the time to produce simple maps	Use it if you’ve got the money to pay for a full subscription and have a familiarity with Inspiration	Use it by all means.  It is free and easy to use.  Students will pick it up quickly and will enjoy using it.

Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers

I think that students should have a clear understanding about what is expected from them in a classroom.  To that end I think that these expectations can come through clearly to a student by the teacher’s use of cues and questions.  The way a teacher asks a question will frequently give students a lot of context about how it should be answered.  By the careful and thoughtful crafting of cues and questions a teacher can give their class a lot a leeway into making their own constructions about what is expected from the class.  In doing so a teacher allows their students a greater stake in their own learning.

Nonlinguistic Representation

As a visual learner myself I can not under state the importance of giving students visuals to accompany their learning.  I have found visuals, be it videos, graphic organizers or demonstrations, all have a positive impact on student learning in my classroom.  Students frequently can recall demonstrations I have performed much easier than just facts I have recited in class.  To this end I try to incorporate as much visual material into my lectures and class work as possible.  I also try to give students the flexibility to complete projects using as many visual tools as possible to help students use visual tools in their learning on their own.

Summarizing and Note taking

 Note taking is one of the hardest skills for my students to master.  They pretty much just fall in to two categories:  the ones who take too many notes and the ones who take too few.  Not many students have mastered the art of taking concise accurate notes.  I like to give my students partially completed notes and have them fill them out during the lecture or presentation.  This seems to stream line the process and make it a little more blatant as to what is important and what is not important.  Unfortunately, this does not prepare students for college or for times when they have to create their own meaning from a body of information.  I constantly struggle with what is the right amount of supports in my classroom for the taking of notes and summarizing of information.