This is the class blog for the 2007-2008 Mendon High School Regents Physics Class, Period 5.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
To be perfectly honest, I don't understand how this blog will help us learn physics. If someone could explain how this whole thing is supposed to work, that would be great.
I'll take this one Alexis, since it's my job to help you see the value. Let me start by asking you to re-read my first post , and especially the first paragraph:
"One of the most important individual responsibilities we have as citizens of the world is to strive to become educated citizens, and a critical skill of any educated citizen is that of effective communication. Scientists must be able to communicate about science, and physics students must be able to communicate about physics. We must be able to speak, listen, read, and write about physics. We cover speaking and listening about physics for the most part in class on a daily basis, but I want to provide the opportunity for you also to read and write about physics."
The idea of the blog, and the scribe posting process in particular is to encourage the practice of reading and writing about physics.
There is another reason, and just yesterday there was a new post by Mr. Kuropatwa, the teacher from Winnipeg, Manitoba after whom I'm modeling our blog effort, that gets at another key idea here. Quoting from that post:
"You can require your students to demonstrate their understanding of what they are learning by having them apply their knowledge analyzing and evaluating relevant novel situations or problems. Better yet, get them to create content that educates an interested learner and they will automatically incorporate all those levels of engagement while they make their learning sticky. I don't need to tell you that there's nothing like having to teach a thing to make you really learn it."
When it's your turn to create your scribe post, the thought process you'll need to go through to explain the learning that went on in class that day will serve to create a much deeper understanding of the content. You'll be creating a written document that is intended to teach others, and in the process be teaching yourself. Although your individual post will only be required every month or so, I am encouraging students to read each daily post, and even from the other 3 sections, in order to increase your understanding of that day's lesson.
Thank you for expressing your concern, and I hope you will give it a shot and help me see how this turns out. Think of it as having 76 teachers total, not just one.
1 comment:
I'll take this one Alexis, since it's my job to help you see the value. Let me start by asking you to re-read my first post , and especially the first paragraph:
"One of the most important individual responsibilities we have as citizens of the world is to strive to become educated citizens, and a critical skill of any educated citizen is that of effective communication. Scientists must be able to communicate about science, and physics students must be able to communicate about physics. We must be able to speak, listen, read, and write about physics. We cover speaking and listening about physics for the most part in class on a daily basis, but I want to provide the opportunity for you also to read and write about physics."
The idea of the blog, and the scribe posting process in particular is to encourage the practice of reading and writing about physics.
There is another reason, and just yesterday there was a new post by Mr. Kuropatwa, the teacher from Winnipeg, Manitoba after whom I'm modeling our blog effort, that gets at another key idea here. Quoting from that post:
"You can require your students to demonstrate their understanding of what they are learning by having them apply their knowledge analyzing and evaluating relevant novel situations or problems. Better yet, get them to create content that educates an interested learner and they will automatically incorporate all those levels of engagement while they make their learning sticky. I don't need to tell you that there's nothing like having to teach a thing to make you really learn it."
When it's your turn to create your scribe post, the thought process you'll need to go through to explain the learning that went on in class that day will serve to create a much deeper understanding of the content. You'll be creating a written document that is intended to teach others, and in the process be teaching yourself. Although your individual post will only be required every month or so, I am encouraging students to read each daily post, and even from the other 3 sections, in order to increase your understanding of that day's lesson.
Thank you for expressing your concern, and I hope you will give it a shot and help me see how this turns out. Think of it as having 76 teachers total, not just one.
Post a Comment