Replies

• • Terry Anderson@terrya

  

  Terry Anderson February 25, 2009 - 9:13am

  Hi Thomas

  I didn't watch all of these videos, but I found them to be detailed, his voice engaging and the quality fine. Must of all I like the accessibility- for the teacher- easy to create quality screen capture videos with voice, and easy to distribute through Utube and other sites.

   My biggest concern is the with the cookbook pedagogy. Just having the students follow along. Are they really learning to learn, or just learning to follow. I would hope the scaffolding he provides with the videos would be reduced near the end or next task, so that students come to be more self directed in a gradual emerging of their own self-efficacy.

• • Thomas Sheppard@thomassh

  

  Thomas Sheppard February 25, 2009 - 11:01am

  As high school teachers we always struggle with this issue of self-efficacy.  Trying to move our students away from being spoon-fed to becoming more indenpendent learners is a struggle.

  The way I approach this in the tech projects I give students is to teach them basic skills by guiding them as part of a sample project and then give them an even more challenging assignment using the skills they have learned.

  I dislike the cookie cutter templates but they do have their usefulness.  The quality of learning depends on whether the teacher helps their students move beyond this to being confident enough to learn more on their own.