Course Reflections
In my time in this program, I must admit that I find the elective courses much more enjoyable than the core curriculum. I find the electives give me a chance to exercise my imagination muscles. I understand the need for the required courses, and truth be told, I learn more from them. However, I do really enjoy the creative aspect that the electives bring to the table. This course has not disappointed.
This course gave me a chance to do something I've been wanting to do for quite a while. Although I have no experience in the field, my general perception is that many elementary school teachers underestimate their student's capacity to learn. This suspicion was borne out by some of the responses of my classmates, themselves teachers, to my project.
My goal with the course project was to create an interactive tool where students could introduce themselves to some of the principals of electricity. I realize that there are a multiple of electronic circuit kits on the market, but they mainly come in the form of "Insert Tab A into Slot B. " I wanted to make something would let them play without their parents or teachers worrying about them making mistakes and burning out a transistor or a diode.
At the same time, because DC resistive circuit values can be easily calculated with addition, subtraction and multiplication, I wanted to show them that they could apply their math skills to solve seemingly complex problems. I wanted to answer the question, "What do I have to learn this for? "
As previously mentioned, the initial response from my peers in the class was that this was far too difficult of an exercise to be given to fifth grade students, however, when they read further about how I was going to approach the problem, their resistance waned. At times, I think the very mention of electricity and circuits conjures up the image of Electrical Engineers prowling the halls with pocket protectors. I pointed out to one classmate that, at one time, the same image applied to those who worked with computers.
Additionally, I wanted to create a multi-tiered learning approach with the activity. Using videos allows the students to have multiple teachers within the same lesson. This is a tool I feel more teachers should use. I think, at times, teachers use videos as a distraction rather than as a teaching tool. To be sure, if teachers use videos as their only teaching tool, then they are doing their students a disservice, however, used correctly, instructional videos can be a valuable teaching tool.
Lastly, I want to mention the future of Flash as a platform. As an IT graduate, I'm well aware that Adobe has stated that they will be discontinuing the platform. I must say that I agree with Adobe in this case. There will always be a place for a program like Flash, that creates interesting interactive activities, but I honestly feel that this could be done without an additional program running with the browser. My hope is that eventually the company develop a program similar to Flash that doesn't depend on a .swf file output, but rather generates the same content based on an html/javascript combination thereby making it platform independent.
