Computer Software in Education

The different ways to incorporate computer software into the classroom all seem to be very useful when applied in the correct situation. While I like the constructivist/student-directed inquiry the most I can see merit in all formats as other people had mentioned in their blogs. I would tend to gravitate towards this method because as a future biology teacher I remember how much I enjoyed learning the information through trial and error myself, this approach is also how most of what we know in biology and science was discovered and it would be a great thing for the students to experience this same thing. While I feel that this approach works especially well in a science classroom I would also still use this method while teaching other subjects as well. It may become more difficult in other areas which I can easily see but the idea of letting the students have some autonomy in discovering information could help students move at their own pace as well as letting them build their own interest in it rather then a very drilled approach.
While I do enjoy the student directed approach more a drill/tutoring method could be useful in certain areas such as learning the periodic table. Certain information just needs to be memorized and while trying to have students learn it in another format should be applauded it may come down to time spent trying to learn something in a creative method versus a very drilled/memorized approach and with so much information that you need to try and teach your students time constraints often force your decisions. Utilizing computer software to help in this process is a great thing because it helps add a little creativity to a somewhat structured lesson such as the brainpop website. For a teacher-directed inquiry we went over the webquests and while I looked through as many as I could a lot of them seemed to be lacking certain aspects of a lesson you would want to incorporate into a regular class lecture/discussion. I think that a webquest can be a very useful instrument to a class lesson it seems like its hard to construct one that can reach all the students, much like the one I reviewed it about rocks it had some good information but a lot of it seemed more like links to textbooks with pictures. This is less a use of computer software it seems and more of just an online book to look through to keep students busy. If someone were to create a webquest and really invest the time needed as well as the teacher serving as a good resource for students this format could actually be very productive and foster a great learning environment but from the few we saw and those that were reviewed for us the webquests came up short. Finally the student-directed is the approach I enjoyed the most when I was a student and that may be the reason I enjoy it so much myself. The example we used in class the Etoys was a lot of fun for me and at the same time I was doing a fair amount of learning because I had never used anything like that before. I enjoyed the discovery that you were allowed to make on your own as well as the moments were you got stumped and had to think around the problem for the solution. An approach like this with a teacher that is very knowledgeable about the material to step in for certain problems much like our last class is a great learning approach and the one I would gravitate to more often than not. In a class lesson using the student directed I could see a lot of possibilities such as allowing students to study a food web by providing them with animals in an ecosystem then through trial and error and their own research they would be able to create a working food web of their own.