Blog post 5

Hello all,

Here are 5 active learning activities that you can use in your Computer Science class.

	Name of the activity	Suitable to teach which CS topic?
1	PIM(Plus-Minus-Interesting)	Importance of information technology
2	POST-IT COLLECTION	secrecy and security
3	REVOLVING CIRCLE	Use of social media
4	SIMULATION	Information crimes
5	STICK DEBATE	Digital citizenship

	Name of the activity	Detailed Summary of its steps
1	PIM(Plus-Minus-Interesting) Subject: Importance of information technology	Facilitator discusses with pupils the meaning of PMI and explains what each term means: Plus = a benefit t, Minus = a downside, Interesting = an interesting. In this activity, the students are shown a template including areas to write positive, negative and interesting dimensions of information technologies. Students came to the board and they write positive dimension under plus area, negative dimensions under minus area and interesting dimensions under interesting area and they discuss why they put those dimensions under those areas. Thanks to this activity, students who don’t interest any side of information technologies can interest.
2	POST-IT COLLECTION Subject:  Secrecy and Security	Pupils in groups of four to six receive a Post-It sheet per pupil. In this activity, Each pupil writes his own idea about secrecy and security in online environment on his own post-it and writes some examples belonging to dangers of doing mistake behaviors in online areas which harms our security and secrecy on it. Then, each group’s members come together and they discuss what they wrote as individually. After completing ideas, a general post-it, that including summary of ideas of all members of group and examples with it, is prepared as group post-it.  At the end, Ideas from each group are placed on a flip chart and discussed with all classes.
3	REVOLVING CIRCLE Subject: Use of social media	Pupils divide into two groups. One group forms an inner circle and the other group forms an outer circle Pupils face each other. The inner circle then rotates clockwise and the outer circle rotates anti-clockwise. In this activity, each student will discuss about use of social media with many other students. While circles rotating, students will first ask to each students while they are standing face to face about  which social media tool they use. After, a full return completed, question will change and students will ask to each other for which aim they prefer using social media. The activity can be continued by adding new questions.  The general aim is to let each students discuss with many students about a specific idea of social media.
4	SIMULATION Subject: Information crimes	This activity is a role play activity. In this activity, students will learn information crimes and their penalty. Firstly, a court environment will be designed in the class. A student will be judge. Three students will be co-judge.  A few students will be public prosecutor and some students will be criminal. In this activity, some students is guessed that they have done some information crimes and their situation will be discusses by other in the court. After, discussing, firstly, it will be decided whether it is really an information crime or not. Secondly, it will be decided what penalty should be given if it is an information crime.
5	STICK DEBATE Subject: Digital citizenship	Each pupil receives three (lollipop) sticks. Every time that someone cannot speak, they must hand in a stick. In this activity, each student will have to talk about what to do to be a conscious digital citizenship and what the digital citizenship means. If students cannot give any answer they will lose a stick. The person who lost his all stick will be eliminated and the students who have most sticks in his hand will win.

Notice : I would like to mention that activities here are inspired or adapted from http://www.nicurriculum.org.uk/docs/key_stage_3/ALTM-KS3.pdf

Blog post 3

Active Learning

Active learning is to prepare yourself for learning with the way you describe. You decide how you learn, which way is suitable for you to learn and you decide how to test yourself to be sure about your own understanding. Active learning is supported with an important theory which is constructivism. Constructivism is the king of unrestricted education. Constructivism depends on manipulation and recreation of your own knowledge.  In this way, learner can learn from environment and he can identify some concepts, he can create new concepts in his mind by using those created concepts and differentiate those concepts from each other. During active learning one of the important methods is “wearing different hats”. Wearing different hats method teaches people to be able to have different shapes for different roles. For example, a teacher should be able to both evaluator and lieder, when one of them is required. Also, he should be able to think as a student when preparing an activity or learning materials to be able to look events from students’ dimension. The other important thing is “bridging gaps”. When you teach a class, you shouldn’t expect all students to have same knowledge background. There will definitely be students who have lack of knowledge background. Also, you may not have time to interest all students individually to bring them same stage so you should make students active to complete their own background.  In this way, students can have their own responsibility to catch their friends in terms of knowledge background with teacher leadership. In addition, active learning has some stages to support its education model. These stages are formed as four parts. The first part is called as Trigger. It belongs to introducing a topic with helpful assignment. The trigger should be broad to let students look from different dimensions and it should be relevant for students. Trigger is not limited in term of subject. Second part is called as Activity. In this stage, students work on trigger to make analysis and researches. The third part is Discussion. In this stage, what is done so far is presented to entire class by students who work on projects and they are discussed by other students. During discussion instructor describe key points but don’t judge any idea or opinion. The forth part is Summarizing. In this stage teacher make a general summarization about work done so far. Instructor defines important point, highlights main concepts. 

Blog post 10

Covering Semester

                    In my third year, first semester I learned many things from my CTE 380 course. In this course, I learned how to approach education and its systems. I learned how to behave through students and how to survive in school environment. I learned how to motivate students and how to make them active participation that cares their education.  Actually, the most important thing is that I learned which education type is my favourite and suitable according to my worldview.

Actually, I have never seen teacher in the center of education so far. I am one of the people who cannot learn better in the class. In my life, I have learned many things from internet. Before internet enters my life, I was learning from books. There are many people like me who learn from internet. This is our reality. The world is changing. Before the time that people learn in a class, people were learning where information is. I call this as natural education. For us the important thing is that how information is shown and well prepared in internet.  Actually, this is the thing which teachers have to be in the center.  Looking to the internet to learn something is easy. However, who will prepare instruction for learner in internet. This is definitely work of teacher to prepare learning materials. The education system is going to our old education model which people don’t need any fix place to learn something. Also, the technology is one of the things which attract people in the way of learning anywhere. I mean that we don’t do anything to pass our old and natural education style. This century requires us to make these changes. Actually, when we look to the world, the educators from all countries agree that there is a problem in the education systems which effect people’s education in a bad way. Some of them realised this earlier, and they did something to change their education type. They realised that the education system which direct education is used is not enough anymore. People started memorizing the words which comes from the mouth of teacher but they become unsuccessful when practicing their knowledge in real life. Turkey is one of the countries which still use teacher centered education with direct education model and when we look turkey’s score in the world average, we face with very bad results. I am definitely sure that if the knowledge had been asked in the Pisa examination, turkey would take high scores in the average. However, they asked students how to use their knowledge when thinking. This shows that we are memorizing knowledge and we cannot use it. This shows that the term understanding is different from the term identifying. This is why I definitely support student centered approach in education. Actually, students don’t need teacher to learn knowledge. However, they need teacher to be able to think better. From our childhood we are put in front of a teacher and we think that we cannot learn knowledge by our self. Actually, every people have the ability to memorize. However, they may not know how to practice the knowledge they memorize and their knowledge may not come to the stage of identifying.

If we understand that the teacher centred approach with direct education does not work anymore, let’s focus the approach which students are in the center. According to student center approach, practicing in class is very important. Especially, the Flipt classroom model is my favourite. Students will learn all knowledge wherever they want. They will come to class only for practicing. If teacher realises that students are not developed in the subject in terms of knowledge. This time, teacher can hand learning of students in terms of knowledge. In this way, student will ask question and teacher will guide without directing. Student centred approach follow problem based learning. Students learn from problems. This is our natural learning method. So far, people have invented everything by their problems. For example, Edison found bulb because he had a light problem.  Grahambell found telephone because reaching people who is far away was hard. Problem based learning help students develop their critical thinking. In this method, teacher offer problems to the students and guide them about how to solve problems and which technique they can use to solve them. In problem based learning method, students do not focus problems only from one dimension. I mean they can hand problems both math formulas and social sciences.  For example, when they are working on traffic problem, they can both calculate the speed of cars in term of time and search for the behaviours of drivers. On the other hand, choosing correct questions for students is very important. If teacher chose a question which is over the capacity of the students, this cannot be helpful for student learning. Also, this may decrease motivation of students because they cannot see themselves as qualitative to reach solution. Motivation is very important because it is the tool let people take an action. Also, teacher generally should choose question from real life because real life examples are concrete. When learning subject, students should not ask question by themselves like what is the aim of this problem. How can it be helpful for me and e.g. Also, abstract things is better in learning logically. However, teacher may offer abstract problems for students who achieved basic learning process.  In addition, all students are special. Teacher should not offer limited problems for special students. Problems should be able to being approached from different dimensions. Also, all learning activities should be prepared in terms of respect to the ethnic, cultural, religious worth of the students. For example, teacher should not offer students any problem like ignorance of African socials, when there is an African student in the class.

Finally, student centred education is our reality and natural education type. It makes students free and more responsible people who care their education. However, it is not easy to apply. Both teacher and students should be conscious when applying this method to the education.  

Blog post 9

Student Centered Approaches to Teaching

         

               Students centered approaches aims to make students more active in their education. Actually, nowadays, we are getting educated by Teacher centered education approach with direct educatin model. This approach relays on knowledge based and the instructor directly manages class. The instructor chose subjects that students will learn and prepare curriculum by himself. On the other hand, students centered approach gives an opportunity to the students. Students can chose subject they want to learn. They can describe their education time and limit. They don’t have to be educated on a subject which they dont have any interest and related ability. Also, students use the class more on practicing. They both learn knowledge and how to use it. Also, Problem based learning is one of the opportunity in students centered approach. This model depends on learning by using problems. Especially, real life problems are used in problem based education. To make learning more obvious and to offer it in a logical way for long term memory. Also, the Flipt classroom model is another opportunity coming with student centred approach. Flipt classroom model is the top version of students centered approach for me. Students are really active in their education. They learn all instruction and required knowledge out of the classroom by himself, and they come to the class only for practicing. Their instructer only guides them about how they use their knowledge in examples and how they will use their critical thinking on subjects. Moreover, this helps cooperative learning to develop in class environment because all students work as being groups, and they discuss subjects as a community. When it is necessary, they become peer helper for each of them to help identifying subjects and to go in deeper on subjects.

Blog post 8

Classroom Discussion

Discuss and learn, this is the best way which enables students to invent, create, imagine and dig for deeper meanings. In this way, students and teacher share their ideas to enrich each other. Let’s look why teachers use it in class. Actually, students construct their own meaning and ıt may be correct or not. However, they may not develop it by themselves so they may need ideas coming from their peers and teachers. In this way, they will differentiate their ideas with other, and they will again construct their own meaning by their cognitive process in a logical way. Also, students will improve their effective thinking process in this way because they will do critical thinking when differentiating their ideas and creating them again. Moreover, this is a group activity so communication skills of students will definitely improve when sharing ideas.

Discussion is a concept belonging to questions so it is really important to find or create correct and effective questions to improve discussion. Question types and their aim changes according to required skills. For example, factual question is more suitable for young children because ın their stage, they need mastery of basic understanding. Factual questions are more concrete so they are better for basic understanding. On the other hand, higher cognitive questions are more effective when basic understanding achieved because it is more suitable for students who are independent and have higher level thinking. It is really important that teacher should identify their students stage, and they should not force students to work on questions which are higher than students cognitive level because it may harm student’s motivation. On the side, discussion needs some wait time. People sometimes cannot give direct answers because of their anxiety or lack of information so teachers should give students approximately 3 second wait time for them to collect their ideas and present it. Also, sometimes teacher ask question and wait for a long time. This should not be done. If students have an answer, s/he does not wait for a long time and tell it to escape from that situation and silence in class. Otherwise, it shows that students do not have any idea about subject, so don’t wait for long time. If necessary, talk with students later.

We learned how to create correct discussion way. Now, let’s look how to create correct discussion plan. Firstly, teacher should choose an approach to support discussion and to go on a controlled way. Secondly, teacher should make a plan including objectives, discussion items and question for discussing. Thirdly, setting an arrangement. This includes how students and teacher will sit in the class environment. How effectively chairs should be designed to control interaction with students to teacher and students to students. Also, there should be empty places in class for teacher to reach every student easily. Lastly, teacher should definitely be careful when creating discussion because discussion should be open for all students to make all students active. Teacher should not focus a specific part of the class.

Blog post_7

Problem/project based learning

 

Since a long time, many countries are working to change their education system because they think that their education system does not meet with needs anymore and being inadequate. Actually, all countries have used teacher centered education system so far but some of them changed it with better education system and some of them like turkey still use it. When we look our education system, we can say that we are not so good. Actually, some test like Pisa shows that we are below of average of education quality compared to other countries. I think we force to use this education model but it is obvious that this model is not adequate moreover. What can we do? Should we change our education model? Actually, yes, we should change our education model. We have put teachers on the center so far. It worked for a short time but not anymore. It is the time to put students on the center so let’s focus the Problem Based Learning model which put students on the center of education. Problem based learning consists of presenting students with authentic and meaningful problem situations that can serve as springboards for investigations and inquiry. Students are problem solver and instructors are facilitator. They find activities belonging to problems in daily life and guide students when they work on them. Students approach problems from different dimensions so they can use physics and math formulas when they work on a social problem. They can develop themselves in many subject when working on a problem. Then, let’s see how problem based learning is used. At first, problems which are chosen by facilitator should definitely be real life problems because the aim of education is to make students ready for real life. Also, Problems should require alternative solutions because every child are special and they may focus problems from different dimensions with different solutions. We shouldn’t limit them. 

Also, we should not expect students to solve problems over their intellectual level. Problems should be balanced. On the other hand, we should know how to plan for problem based learning. As we did with teacher centered approach, we also should decide on goals and objectives because the goals and objectives describe the direction to remind where the lesson is going. Also, this education model aims to educate on problem solving so we have to design appropriate problems belonging to real life otherwise we cannot apply it on education. Actually, teachers are guide in this education model but they still have many work to do. They have to be very careful when monitoring and managing students work because they determine how students work on their projects. Moreover, they should be good evaluator because this education model makes students free on their thinking so evaluation rubric should be prepared very carefully.

 Finally, Problem based education offer a chance to be better. However, it requires some challenges to achieve it.