Throughout my educational experience I have encountered a lot of lessons that were not well designed. Not only were lessons not well designed but some of my classes in general I didn’t believe were well designed. The one class that stands out in my mind that I would have loved to re-design is my freshman year (in high school) astronomy class. I thought astronomy was going to be an exciting and interesting class, I was wrong. All my teacher did was lecture. The class was extremely boring and I did pretty badly in the course because I had no motivation to learn the material. I believe that if my teacher would have used more interactive lessons, such as using multimedia, then the class would have been a lot better.
A typical day in my astronomy class went like this…
- Take roll
- Hand in homework
- Listen to the teacher lecture for about 45 minutes and try to take notes
- Get homework assignment for the night
- Leave class
Sounds exciting don’t it? Who wouldn’t want to take a class like that! The first thing I would re-design is how she gave lecture. My teacher just talked that was it. She showed pictures sometimes but she never had notes written down for us. We had to listen and then write down what we felt was important. I hated that. I wished that she had notes for us or at least had slides up with notes. It would have been much easier to study if I had concrete notes.
Another thing that I would do to re-design my high school astronomy class is I would add a lot more multimedia. One simple multimedia aspect that I would add is showing movies about astronomy. I took an astronomy class last semester at Drexel and my teacher showed us movies about stars all the time, they were interesting to watch. I have seen a lot of different simulations about the universe, stars, and planets on the internet. If my teacher had only known about these different simulations class could have been so much better! There are all different types of sites where you can go onto and “travel” through the universe. Here are a few examples of different simulations that can be used while teaching about astronomy.
Virtual Journey into the Universe
http://library.thinkquest.org/28327/main/cockpit.html
Virtual Space Tour
http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/virtualspacetour/
Celestia
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/index.html
I think that by using more interactive ways of teaching students are more engaged. When students are engaged they learn more. That is why I believe using these fun, educational, and interesting simulations about the universe would help further student learning. I think that my teacher could have also used multimedia in assessing us. Tests with multiple choice, true or false, and fill in the blanks are not the only ways to assess student learning. My teacher could have used more performance assessments dealing with multimedia to assess us. I think that these types of assessments are fun to do and can be beneficial for those students who are bad test takers. One type of assessment that I would have done if I was teaching the class is to have the students break into groups and become a team of astronomers that discovered a new planet or star. They would use video cameras (supplied by the teacher or school) and make a “special report” talking about their discovery. This assessment would not only be fun but would also show the teacher the knowledge of characteristics of stars and planets the students have acquired.
Multimedia lessons and assessments can be incorporated into any subject area. Teachers need to know about multimedia so they can incorporate it into their classrooms and lessons because it is extremely beneficial for their students. I wish my astronomy teacher knew more about multimedia because I believe I would have enjoyed the class more and learned more if multimedia was incorporated.
2 comments:
Annmarie, I feel awful that you experience such a horrible class! I can only imagine how bored you were! I have definitely sat through some classes like that throughout high school and college. I agree that the teacher should have handed out concrete notes. As you struggle to write down notes about what the teacher is saying, you are missing parts of her lecture that could be as important as the notes you are writing. Doesn't make sense right? I also agree that the teacher should have used multimedia. That would have grabbed and kept your attention much longer. I like the examples you posted, they are really interesting. I took the astronomy class here at Drexel with you, and although the subject itself was not all that interesting to me, the videos and pictures helped keep my attention so I could learn the material.
I understand exactly what you went through. I really like your ideas in order to incorporate multimedia into the class. Those are some really good ideas and think if that was done the class would be much better.
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