Saturday 9 July 2016

"Is this what you wanted?"




As i embarked on a applying a version of Self-directed learning in my classroom. One major issue surfaced, time and time again.

  "is this what you wanted? is this good enough?"

I learned very quickly that my explanations of expectations were lacking and that this was a school dynamic most were not used to.  I really had to step up the level of communication and checking in with my students.  Frustration levels can spike and spread like wildfire among the students if the right amount of feedback and encouragement isn't given.  Unless the students really take hold of the idea of figuring out a problem on their own, instead of the learned helplessness reflex, frustration will exist.



It was very interesting to experience and reflect on what I had read vs. what I assumed about self directed learning.  The feedback was very time consuming.  The preparation was very time consuming, but in the end it was a very successful technique.

Tuesday 5 July 2016

A split group format

One of my fellow PIDPers made a digital project illustrating the values of group based learning.



I had a large challenge in deciding how I was going to organize the format of my 4th level course.  They biggest challenge i had was the allocation of materials and shop equipment.  As a class of 16 a lot of the 4th year projects require having enough equipment to teach and get everyone involve in the same subject at the same time.  Due to budget and space constraints in our shop it isnt possible to teach 16 students one subject.  the default method had been to "talk about the projects and make the curriculum purely theoretical.  I felt as though this was a gigantic waste of an opportunity to introduce and explore some of the most detailed and technical aspects of our trade.

So the big question and something I say to my students..."OK you have identified a problem, is this a complaint or do you have a solution"

Here is what I did

I split the class of 16 into 3 groups, 5, 5, and 6.  For each week they were assigned one of three topics.  air compressors, pneumatic circuits and maintenance systems.

I prepared a schedule with detailed times and activities for the groups to work through from Monday to Wednesday. I took the time on Monday to explain the schedule and what was expected.

The result was amazing.  the students really surprised me in how they rose to the challenges I put in from of them.  truly, i did not make things easy.  What I noticed was the more difficult the challenge the more engaged the group was.  

This group arrangement allowed me to give each student an opportunity to work disassembling and re-assembling two major classifications of compressors, working through and buiding 10 separate pneumatic circuits on our trainer boards, and finally, the most valuable activity was to get our students to work with our vibration analysis equipment.  Many millwrights will work their entire career and not fully understand or touch a predictive maintenance device. My students worked with a 30,000$ instrument on a 65000$ IRD dynamic balancer.  Here is a short clip of the engagement experienced by the students.





Over all this has been a huge amount of work but the benefits of seeing students excited and happy in the shop is worth every ounce of effort.  This is definitely a strategy I would like to make work on a regular basis.  I still have alot of work to do to make it better, but its a step in the right direction. So I leave you with what my students have been up to. Enjoy











Monday 4 July 2016

PREZI vs TEXTBOOKS vs MIND MAPS

A fellow instructor and I have worked tirelessly to develop a wide range of prezis to make the classroom discussions and presentations more engaging.  here is an example of one I made for a trade discovery class. The program is designed to introduce high school students interested in trades to jobs they may not understand.

Mr millwright face book page

When the students ask what is with the goat I tell them millwrights are baaaaaaad-ass.

I though it was funny.  usually I am the only one laughing too.


One of the major problems I had with the main textbook we use in our department is that it is linear.  By that I mean the pages are arranged in a row and sometimes in an effort to get through it students lose track of what they are learning about.  The text books are as deliberate as they can be about delivering the information but they are still just one page after the next to the students. Most of the feedback I have received when I ask about they are structured is that the chapters are organized by subject.  What a shame.  What I have tried to do is delineate the book into more of a  ind map so students can relate the current content to the subject-sub subject and topic.

here is an example of how the millwright manual is written

Bearings
-friction bearings
     -liners
     -housing
     -joints
     -lubrication
     -etc
-anti friction bearing
    -laods
    -types
    -housings
    -thrust
    -etc


the point I am tyring to make is in the linear way in which the text is presented

What I have tried to do with my prezi is create a structure so that students can be reminded of the way in which the text book is arranged.

mind mapping


This is the idea I have been going for. A fellow PIDPer framed it nicely.


this is what I have been working on to join the two ideas.  I hope it works out.


Bearings Prezi


Let me know what you think.  To me having a delineated structure to a presentation is a huge benefit of prezi over power point.

comment in the section below.  what do you think?




Sunday 3 July 2016

kahoot! and flipquiz



Another instructor from work told me about this program. It has come up recently in my PIDP course and i gave it a hard look.  I think that this game would be an awesome way to get students involved in review and wrapping up a subject

I use another website called Flip quiz.  It is anopther fun way to play games in the class, an dthe students love it




The downside is the time that it takes to make the boards. I will see iff I can maybe make the students create them.  I heard once, dont ever do anything for the students that they cant do for themselves:)