Nov

14

This may seem obvious but…

Filed Under Musings 

I have noticed that, as a teacher, I really don’t like to stand in front of a class and lecture to/at my students. Over the years, I’ve noticed that other teachers do like to do that.

My approach forces me to move from lecturing to a more inquiry or discovery learning approach. Computers are an ideal tool to accomplish that. You can ask leading questions, give places or approaches for the kids to find the answers, and pretty soon your students will find out what they need to know without you having to stand up in the front and force them to take notes.

If you do like to lecture (and, let’s be honest, all of us do like to hear ourselves talk to at least a certain degree), computers aren’t that useful.

Could this be at least part of the reason why so many high school teachers are slow to adopt computers in their lessons?

Comments

3 Responses to “This may seem obvious but…”

  1. Jeff Dykstra on November 15th, 2008 11:00 am

    Of course, you can also alternate between lecture and inquiry. Sometimes I found that too little “lecture” (or perhaps better, orientation) leads to rather unfocused inquiry. Love your blog!

  2. Anne Mirtschin on November 16th, 2008 3:59 am

    I am with you. I do not like getting up in front of the class and lecturing for too long but I love using computers as much as possible in the classroom.
    I am also visiting to thank you for joining me in my orange day in a sentence stars.

  3. Linus on November 19th, 2008 3:05 pm

    Thanks, Anne, I appreciate your thoughts and I enjoyed your twist on the day in a sentence theme.

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