For this assignment we have been asked to review educational videos from the intime website and then review their usefullness for our classroom and how we might implement it into our classroom. For my part, I chose to review a video entitled Hyperlinking Partnership from the desk of David Pratt from Perry Community High School in Perry Iowa. The video pertains to a collaboration between the students and members of the community in the field of Computer Aided Drafting and Design.
This video relates directly to my field as I too am a Drafting and Design teacher. Over my years as an instructor, I have actively searched out ways to form a collaboration with our community in where we can identify to our students the "Real World" meaning of our instructions in their everyday lives. Mr. Pratt has developed a very good model of how to do this and therefore I can see myself stealing many of his ideas and instituting them into my own classroom. In this video Mr. Pratt has gathered numerous community members and brought them into the classroom to act as mentors for the students in helping them brainstorm and create a desgin using Kennex. I think my own personal lab is slightly more technologically relevant as well as my classroom set-up more conduscive to specialized instruction so with that in mind I would make minor adjustments to the curriculum to better utilize the collaboration of the community members. Mr. Pratt is instructing both Drafting students at the same time he is instructing Architecture students and therefore has members of the community from each of these fields where I would prefer to have just Architects or just Mechanical Engineers working with my individualized classes. In addition, Mr. Pratt uses Kennex to model the students designs where I would prefer to have the students make working models and prototypes of their mechanical designs and prototyped models of the homes they've designed. My advantage over Mr. Pratt is that my software allows my students to create drawings in a day vs. his software that takes weeks to do the same. This flexibility would not only allow my students to create more detailed drawings with the assistance of their mentor but it would also allow them to spend more time determining how to create a prototype. As long as I limited the materials and gave structure to what can be designed, I think one school day would be appropriate for completing this task.
I not only see this application as being very beneficial for my students in helping them learn, I also see this as being a way to present our program to the community and make a solid name for our program within the community. I have had the pleasure of meeting several of our Mechanical workers and they are extraordinarily pleased with where we have gone, however, I think that if they could work firsthand with our students, this may provided a pipeline for future employement.
All-in-all I found this site to be very usefull and very effecient. I will not only utilize this site for this particular lesson but will continue to search further for other lessons that I may be able to scavenge. Yeah, that's right, I'm a vulture and I'm proud of it.
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Making the connection too the community is crucial, especially in our area. I try and have the news come in once a semester to take pictures of my students. We also are remodeling our school so we have students help create their own floorplan of the school. They really enjoy the assignment.
ReplyDeleteGreat connections from the video to your situation - it sounds like this has you considering different ways to make community connections - and keep scavenging, why invent it all?
ReplyDeleteI admire your efforts to connect your class to the community! This is something I would like to do more in my class. I'm sure that your students really appreciate the connections you help them to make. I hope your softball season is going well, our first game is Thursday!
ReplyDeleteThe community piece is great not only for your program, but really for the students who have been given the ultimate "authentic learning" piece.
ReplyDeleteI am having a guest speaker from Laos come in at the end of the quarter. She spent the first 4 years of her life in a refugee camp, before coming to America and trying to balance between being Hmong and American. In just introducing the idea of having her come in to talk, my students went crazy with questions and ideas. They really eat up these opportunities and I always feel bad that I haven't developed the contacts yet to provide them with more. I am excited to see that you are able to supply your kids with this opportunity.
Ryan,
ReplyDeleteThere is no question that in teaching it is essential to connect lessons to "Real World" meaning. Although I am in a different subject area than you, I think that it is crucial for learning to be effective if students are allowed to make connections to their lives outside of school. Having mentors oversee the process really makes the learning process relevant for students, especially being able to interact with real professionals who make their living using the technology that students are trying to learn.
I am curious if projects were submitted for critique by these mentors. My wife attended MIAD, and classes were taught by professionals. This "real world" teaching gave her honest feedback concerning whether or not her work had merit in the world. These professionals would grade with the idea that students were their employees, and they weren't afraid to offer frank criticism. I think that having mentors grading the work in Mr. Pratt's classroom would open a new world of appreciation for what it takes to be successful in that given field.