Answers to Questions in the book

Chapter 5 in textbook (pp. 82-98), answer ques. # 2, 4, 13

#2 : This is a very profound question. I think that carpenters need their tools to perfect their knowledge of carpentry. They can learn about this art, by mere observation. They do not need tools to learn the art. This answer is a specification of what Kant observed about Euclidean geometry. Euclidean geometry is intuitive because of our observations. Non-Euclidean geometry is not.

#3 : I think that the term mindless thinking is a contradiction in terms. Thinking has to be with the mind. We can say "square circle", but if we dissect the concept, it reduces to absurdity.

#13: Some of the tools that can be used in learning are didactic poems for example. These poems can be memorized by the student and the teacher fills them in regarding the meaning of these poems. This will lead them to keep the knowledge with them all their lives.

Topic sentences while reading can also be another tool, which can be used to create an outline of a book.


chapter 6 (pp. 100-120), answer ques. #1, 2.

#1 : They share the responsibility of mutual participation. They should encourage the process by being an active part of the learning community and by taking initiative in the shared learning process. Technology can serve the goals of learning community by giving everyone the opportunity to voice their opinion with a lot of flexibility of time and location. It can get in the way by giving students more opportunities to plagiarize for example, a route if followed will lead to a lack of creativity.

#2 : They can have a monitoring blog, on which students are supposed to post their particular responses. The teacher can monitor this blog and thus give differentiated instruction to the students, thereby enhancing their learning experience.


chapter 6 (pp. 120-137), answer ques. #6, 7

#6 They might have a point saying so. If children are given too much exposure to technology, they could make big digressions from the learning process by getting caught up in the periphery entertainment that comes as a package with beneficial technology.

If they use technology e.g. blogs and wikis in a proper way, it can also lead them to leaning some new things, by a directed approach to group oriented activities. It is thus a two sided sword and is not completely without benefit.

#7 You can have students post their questions to the teacher, and the teacher can respond to everyone, thus helping a group. Group members can also help each other by responding to one another on discussion forums. You can design group activities in which students modify shared documents (google documents is a good example)

chapter 7 (pp. 140-167), answer ques. #3, 5, 7, 9

#3: I would say that online chats distract the children in their classes from real instruction. By real instruction, I mean the transmission of knowledge that comes in person from the teacher. Online chats can distract the students from concentrating on the teacher.

#5: Yes they can, but the assumption holds that parents are willing to use these technologies. Students now a days are generally better than their parents at using communication devices.
Parents can be for example added to a parents group where they can login to make sure that they are in sync with other parents in similar situations.

#7: There are some benefits. In asynchronous systems, students have more time to think and respond. This is particularly important when it comes to analysis situations, in which students have to stop and think. In live situations, students are in pressure to respond right away.

#9: In case of Podcasts, the user can download the file and review it when necessary. He can also listen to the file, whenever he wants. This flexibility gives podcasts more preference over radio transmission. As a result, radio broadcast is not used as much in classrooms.


chapter 4 (pp. 62-80), answer ques. #2, 4, 6

#2 : Brainstorming activities , for example can use mind maps. Another way in which I have used mindmaps, is to enhance vocabulary in case of ESL students. I believe that in order to acquire the native flair of a language, students should be able to link words to concepts. Using mind maps, they can do so in case of new words that they learn.

#4 : I would think that this is particularly a motivating approach. Students can be motivated by telling them that whoever gets to a particular standard in writing for example, his work will be published on the course website for others to look at. This might motivate them to perform good. Teachers can, like in the case of EDPT 200, maintain a community link, which would give the students a sense of belonging to the teacher.


#6: Teachers should be acting as the main collaborators. They for example can be the admin, who monitors a certain group. If they do so, they can post their comments on students' group activities. They can also help students resolve potential conflicts. This way, student communication would carry out more smoothly, and the teacher would also be involved in the process.


CHAPTER 2


#10. I will have to make an assuption that they do not know how to do a goal directed search(which needs to be taught to them). They have the basic abilities to browse the net and to get information from credible and non credible sources.

# 11
1. That the searches have to be goal directed to be efficietn.
2. That there are all kind of websites on the net and they have to figure out a way to distinguish the truth from falsehood.
3. That there are different types of search engines.

#14

`The internet consists of webpages that have been made and posted on a world wide web by many different users. It consists of a backbone and its branches on which users exist. It is possible to search this web. There are also private spaces which have restricted access.

CHAPTER 3

#2 : Generally anything set of observations with prepositions requires an inference to be made based on the rules of deductive logic (or induction in case of science). This can include maths, philosophy, or science in general.

#4 They can do so by testing what they have postulated on unseen conditions. For example, they can test newton's second law of motion on another planet, by seting the g to be something other than 9.8 m/s^2

# 8: This is very hard to do, as immitating the real world can have variables taht the person who is bulding the simulation possibly does not take into account. If I were building a simulation, I would go for something like a mathematical model, as the variables are known and can be controlled. A good simulation would be that of numbers behaving differently in different bases. The variables would be the numbers and their relationship to the bases.

# 10: Because of cursiosity. A person would like to know what it is to be in the shoes of another person and to feel it. I would , for example like to know what it is to be a woman (for example) , another person might like to feel as being the president of the country and to see how it changes the way he views the world.

CHAPTER 8


#1 and #3 are very related so I will attempt to answer them together.
An engaging and effective design would be a design that has to deal with emerging properties. A software, for example is a prosaic example of such a design. When microsoft or apple comes up with an operating system, they always receive feedback from their users of emerging bugs, which they never encoutered from their quality assurance department.

A convergant solution, thus would violate the spirit of an engaging design.

Students can be motivated to continue exploring, by having them design a product which would have some sort of a user interaction. They can thus receive feedback from their users and modify their designs and make them better. An example would be weighwatchers calculator and point tracker ,which can be designed in EXCEL. The users might request the students to add graphs etc, which will keep the students busy.


CHAPTER 9

#1 There have been new theories in the last century which are very hard to visualise. Take einstein's relativity theory as an example. It is hard to imagine how time and space can be visualized. However using modelling programs, such a 4rth dimension can be possibly visualized. Another example would be that of non-Euclidean geometory which is not intuitive but it might be visualized or made more intelligable using technology.

#2 Google earth will definitely give us more of a global village kind of outlook. My father for example who is retired and lives in Pakistan, once opened google earth in which I showed him the location of my appartment in montreal. Such a technology does give the feeling that the world is a small place : )

#4 Mathematics requires students to do abstract thinking. When you are thinking in terms of variables, you are abstracting particular situations to a general situation. Mathematical thinking also involves deducting reasoning from established premises, which is the analytic part of maths.

#5 I don't think so. Imagine television showed you how to ride a bike. You will never will able to do so until you actually went out and rode a bike. A TV can give a student the initial urge to explore. The exploration has to be done by the student in the real world in order to see how things work.

#7 A non technological constructionist activity that uses a great deal of abstraction could be coming up with a didactic poem on a subject. This requires that the student. 1

1. Understand the meters of poetry.
2. Understand the subject material at hand.

A student could come up with a poem on material that he has learnt in the class.

#9 Seeing yourself on TV could be either empowering or stimatizing. Most of us have a self image, which is rather flaunted. WE tend to think that the world revolves around us and we are a captain of the ship of detinty. Seeing yourself in the mirror of a video film, could bust that image and thus give one the incentive to improve. It could be empowering after the imporovement can be tangibly observed in later recordings.