While reading the articles of this week, I got headache because this approach is very similar to many previous approaches but different in some ways. I usually think through how to apply an approach while reading, however, I had a hard time this week because I couldn’t help come up with ideas that seemed not belong to this one approach. (I know in the real life I don’t have to try to fit in just one approach, but I’m trying to come up with ideas for our next project.)
I like the way that Anchored Instruction creates an authentic environment for instruction, in which question and information for solving the question are all embedded in a story. This makes learning not only more fun and engaging to students, but also very similar to the real world. Students can benefit largely by learning the subject and high-level thinking skills at the same time. Besides, this approach makes learning much more meaningful to me. In my past learning experiences, there were many subjects that I had asked thousand times that “Why do we need to learn this?” But I didn’t get the answers. So I assumed I learned it to get good grades on the standardized exams. I had no passion and desire to know more about the subjects, and undoubtedly, I threw away all I learned of those subjects soon after the exams. Though I admit that I found the meaning of learning some subjects afterwards (sometimes long after graduation), I still don’t think that’s a good thing since the learning process was painful. I think it is teacher’s responsibility to design a curriculum that is related to students’ lives and make the knowledge non-inert.
Just like GBS, Anchored Instruction has so many things to prepare for a teacher. And it is more challenging for students as well since the materials are not presented in order; learners need to find the question and answers mainly by themselves. Therefore, how to assist them but still need to allow them to struggle seems difficult to me. But I think it is worth trying, so I hope I can come up with more ideas to create a lesson based on this approach in my future class.
I think that like GBS, the elements of Anchored Instruction can be presented by multimedia that embedded in many existing websites, such as embed a video for story or a page of text for story. It’s hard to design software by a teacher, but I think we don’t have to; we can try to use what we have to reach the same goals of this approach.
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You nailed it on the head for me - and this is the part that I forgot to mention in my post because I was lacking internet and didn't bring along my notes from the articles with me on the plane: Authenticity. I think this was the key to GBS for me, that the AI folks talked SO much about authenticity with regards to planning for instruction and developing modules... And I'm big on authenticity and integrity in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteThank you for mentioning this and jogging my memory!!
Hi Miya,
ReplyDeleteI agree that Anchored Instruction takes much preparation and I think it is probably exhausting on the students part. I do think it is a great model, so I wonder if using it more sparingly would be better.
Mary Ellen
Miya - I liked your comment about your own learning situation where you didn't feel like it applied to real life so you forgot it soon after you had to take the test - I totally agree with you on this. It doesn't seem valuable to the student if the learning isn't situated - and it becomes as you said - painful!
ReplyDeleteMiya,
ReplyDeleteI also like your personal reflection, and I came up with the same conclusion you did - we don't have to create videos - we can use what we have! I also talked about that a little in my blog as well. :)
Mike Swinson:
ReplyDeleteOne of the keys to the entire method was that students must learn to identify and define issues and problems on their own rather than simply respond to problems that others have posed. Im my math classes, I have been adding activities that push the construction of the mathematics on the students themselves. I have had to do this gradually as students are not used to this open freedom to construct all possible instances within a particular concept but they do excel once they have the idea and seem to enjoy the ownership.
I agree, while reading I began to mix other theories in with this one.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the work being exhausting to students...while I dont want to exhaust students, the things that I always tell mine when they complain about having to think too much or something being hard...if everything was easy, we would never learn anything. We have to challenge our minds.
I was thinking about how this could be applied or used in our website assignment also. Would a story written out as text be as effective as a video? Im not sure that it would...so how else would you present the information?
Elizabeth