Friday, March 2, 2012
What's the Point?
I have really enjoyed reading all the posts about Pinterest this week. As you continue your thoughts about possible applications for this sort of technology, I encourage you to think about what your goals might be in using it. Namely, I read a lot about students getting distracted or addicted to Pinterest type applications - but if it were science based, would it be a bad thing? (not true addiction per se) If your students are spending their leisure time poking around on science based topics, do you really care how focused it is? Is it more important that they learn specific content or that they are getting excited about science? What are your thoughts on this?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think you have to find a balance in your classroom instruction between concentrating on specific content and generating excitment about science--one builds upon the other. I would like to think in a utopic-kind of world that students spend most of their computer-use time exploring academic pursuits, but alas, we know this is not true. So perhaps, applications such as Pinterest could play a role in focusing their attention on science. The snipppets of information can be generated very quickly and perused likewise. We must remember we are teaching a very consumable generation of students that will communicate in ways we can only image.
ReplyDelete