Over at dy/dan there is a blog post on the physics of Angry Birds. Please read this:
Physics of Angry Birds
1) Pick one of the lesson's Dan talks about. Post here about how you would implement one of the lessons in your classroom or in a teaching situation.
2) Which lesson is most important to you and why?
So before I answer the questions, this angry birds post made me think of something that happened when I was interning in a special education classroom. One of the boys had some anger issues, and would have to have a specialist come in once or twice a week and work with him, because he could not truly function with the others boys (it was an autistic class and it was all boys). So the specialist would come, and she would let the boy play angry birds on her phone. He would do this for up to an hour, and it would calm him down. For this boy angry birds was a stress reliever for his own anger, so I just thought I would share that little story. And now onto the questions-
ReplyDelete1) I would implement the second lesson of show, don't tell in my classroom by having the children work with blocks, or straws, or anything visual. It is much easier to understand why 2+3=5 when you have two apples sitting in front of you, and then you place three more apples in front of you. 2+3=5 is difficult to understand when someone is simply talking about it and you have no visual concept of what they are saying.
2) The most important lesson to me is 4. Make it easy to recover from failure. I feel like too many students view grades as a punishment. A low grade is saying that you are not good enough, you need to work harder, and this is your punishment for not being good enough and not working harder. But in my view, grades are not a punishment at all. They are a way to inform students of their progress. If a child does bad on one assigment, but does well on everything else, that one bad assigment should not ruin his whole grade. I believe children need a chance to correct their work, and learn from their mistakes. A child will feel much better about something if they correct it, and learn from it, than if they are simply handed a paper marked in red with no chance of improving it.
1) Pick one of the lesson's Dan talks about. Post here about how you would implement one of the lessons in your classroom or in a teaching situation.
ReplyDeleteI also like the show don't tell. I think we are in a visual age. Video games, tv, movies and children are told what to do all the time. I think they are likely to tune you out unless you show the child what you want them to do. Many children get excited when you start to show how to do something they are ready to take over and do them selves. That is when you give the useful and immediate feedback and praise.
2) Which lesson is most important to you and why?
I think the make it easy to recover from failure. Too many kids will say i just can't do it and want to give up and push it away. I think the game gives the child the idea it's ok you always can try again until you do it. It doesn't have any negative faces or words to make the child feel like they can't complete the game. and it allows to back up and do over.
1.I think on of the most easily explained and applicable lessons talked about in this article was point three about giving immediate and applicable feedback. This is a relatively simple concept, but one teachers often forget about. This can easily be applied to a classroom situation by grading and responding to a students paper promptly and telling the students what they did wrong,and allowing them a chance to fix their mistakes. This would require taking more time evaluating assignments, nut would offer the students helpful feedback. This lesson can easily be applied and used in conjunction with point five.
ReplyDelete2. I really enjoyed this article and like the many point that dy/dan made. The one that I thought was the most interesting and most important was point number four. This is a point that is rarely applied in schools. This point discussed making recovering from failure simple. We focus so heavily on grades in school that making it possible to recover and forget about failure seems impossible and inapplicable. I think that the fact that elementary schools are moving towards proficiency based evaluation, rather than grades makes it possible to apply this lesson in schools. It would be simple to track a students success by giving them multiple attempts to succeed at a lesson, rather than recording and permanently tracking their failures. This approach would require a teacher to work more (because they would constantly need to be grading and regrading assignments, but it would ultimately lead to a better understanding of subject material and a greater sense of achievement. I think that this is an important point because it is one that focuses on a students gained understanding and success.
1) Of the five lessons Dan talks about I would choose number five, "Complicate the task gradually" to implement. . The implementation process would start at the very beginning and as the title suggests, have the students gradually move through the learning exercise. The first step would be to provide some instruction on the given subject and then move on to some basic form of hands-on task. As the student(s) successfully complete the task, another slightly different and yet more complicated task would be assigned. This process would continue until each student has had sufficient time to complete all the required tasks.
ReplyDelete2)The lesson that is most important to me is to give "useful and immediate feedback". I believe this to be true from personal experience, too many times I have taken tests or submitted homework assignments only to have to wait four to five classes later to learn what is was that I did wrong. The longer it takes for feedback to be received the less impact it has on changing my thoughts as I have already moved on to the next test or homework assignment.
1. Giving useful and immediate feedback is the one I would implement in my classroom because if a student is not getting the easier parts of a problem in the beginning how is he going to get the more advanced part of the problem. I like how the author says, "When you miss, you can easily re-adjust." Students need to know that it's okay to get a problem wrong. You have the chance to try again (re-adjust). If I was am not in a situation when I don't have the chance to try again if I fail, I tend to shutdown.
ReplyDelete2. Making it easy to recover from failure is most important to me because nobody likes to fail. But the fact of the matter is that everyone fails. It's a part of life. But when we know, in a classroom, that there is a little room to get it wrong sometimes we can be able to push ourselves a little more or not hold back because of a fear of failure. But there is a line that needs to be drawn because ultimately failure is not acceptable but if you leave room for it in the beginning it will be harder to fail in the end.
well... number A.- i don't have any intention at this time to have a classroom or any sort of teaching responsibilitys. however i think that being able to recover from failure is probably the most significant point raised, especially in terms of the failures not counting toward the final score. it seems that by the construct most teachers use they have forgotten that learning is a process. giving an exam that is a permanent grade limits and discourages further attempts at mastering the material. if, however, a student is given an exam and allowed to change the grade later by demonstrating understanding of the material it seems much more likely to encourage further attempts at mastering material they may have had difficulty with at the time of the exam.
ReplyDeletenumber B- the same one, and i think it was probably as well explained in number A as it will be :)
The point most important to me (as listed here) is to "complicate the task gradually" in combination with "make the task easy to start." I feel that these two lessons compliment each other in that having clear direction to begin with and building upon an established success are tools I have to use in all areas of my life. The lesson I find useful to implement when in a teaching situation is "give useful and immediate feedback" in combination with "make it easy to recover from failure." There is room for feedback in successful situations as well as events that don't achieve desired results. When failure is an insurmountable hurdle, feedback can be perceived as critique of the individual, instead of a learning opportunity.
ReplyDelete1. I would use it as an introduction activity. I would ask the children. "Why did the boards fall over?," "How far back did you have to pull the bird in order to get it to shoot that far?,"How come this pig wasn't counted?" Following the answers to these questions, we would explore the physics behind the game. Force, momentum, weight, angles, etc. I might even use the bean experiment we did earlier in class. That would emphasize the momentum needed to launch the bird or bean.
ReplyDelete2. The most important to me it "Make it easy to start a task." I think children should feel excited or at least curious about the content of the lesson. I think presenting the ideas in a familiar format to many children (a.k.a. a game)helps them feel able and confident to explore the ideas behind the game. For example, I remember my teacher started the lesson on the hypotenuse with this joke: "A passenger on the airplane needed to go to the bathroom. But when he got there, he found a sign that said, "High pot in use."
1.) I would use the concept of making it easy to retry something after you have failed. The purpose of assignments and tests are to make sure kids learn the material being covered. If they fail, they didn't learn, and we need to try again.
ReplyDelete2. ) This is the most important one for me, because it's easy for teachers to move on from a subject without some people understanding it. But in most courses, the material is always somewhat cumulative. I think it's important that every student trying to learn understands the material before the class moves on. Teachers make it too easy for kids to fall behind.
1)The lesson I would implement in my classroom lesson's would be the "show don't tell." This is important to me because not many teachers now a days think this is a valid method for teaching. In my case in particular, I learn more efficiently when shown how to do something instead of reading it out of a book. I would Pick one of the lesson's Dan talks about. Post here about how you would implement one of the lessons in your classroom or in a teaching situation. However, if and when I am a teacher I will do my best to make sure i use many different methods of teaching to satisfy every child.
ReplyDelete2) Giving useful and immediate feedback is important to me because that's really a useful way of teaching your students in the best way you can. You learn more when you have immediate feedback so that way you can change your mistake right away and learn from it.
-This semester i am taking a Math 111 class, which is math for elementary school teachers. These angry birds lessons were a lot like the ones we learn about in class. After what i have learned there and reading that articles on angry birds.. i feel that one of the most important things is the visuals. Children are very visual learners. Not only because it is easier to learn something if you can see it being done but because if you can engage their minds with a "hands on" kind of activity they are more likely to be involved in and pay attention to what you have to say. This is something i plan to do very often in my classroom one day for as many lessons as i can. My father is a 7th grade math teacher, and since he has been there, the 7th grade math scores have improved significantly. I strongly believe that it is because he LOVES hands on activities and might even enjoy doing them more than the children themselves!! He tries to include some sort of activity each week so that the children will want to learn and have fun doing so!
ReplyDelete-On the other hand, i think making it easy to recover from failure is very important when teaching children. They tend to get down on themselves very easily and want to give up. If you can somehow make it simple and exciting to try again they will want to keep going and learning and they will even get more out of the lesson because they will want to keep going on their own and not because they feel obligated to do so.
I liked the thought of Angry Birds not only as a educational source for physics but more fundamentally as a pedagogical resource was interesting and I always love the ideas non-conformist teachers bring to their students, giving them examples and tools applicable to their interests. I still found it hard to take seriously as interesting as it was. I am not an Angry Bird player nor a math lover, and I don't find any relevance in my life for either, so I might be biased. (Although I do wish I had better basic math skills for small tasks and for our next project coming up!) Meyers did mention certain disadvantages to "games as learning" and these are important not to forget. I think that bringing personal relevance to students in education is crucial but going to the point of mindless video games might be over the top because it could potentially dissuade students from learning and allow them to enter a state of thoughtless muscle memory, and then what is learned?? What if games like this makes a student lazy?? I know that there is a certain importance to learning the techniques/basics of a field before more complex concepts are worked out and it is important for a student's work ethic to do the long hand version before shortcuts are learned.
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