Hello everyone,
(Taking a break from some badly needed spring cleaning to share my thoughts on this week’s topic.)
Concept Maps and Virtual Field Trips
I find that concept maps can be great tools to help one organize their ideas and see relationships between larger, overarching concepts and supporting details. Sometimes this can be a really helpful tool in making sense of a content area. That is, a student can see how the declarative knowledge fits together; this can be helpful in their seeing a “big picture”—in generating a conceptual framework for the content. The concept map can help students organize their schemas for a content area--to help them make a mental map for the concepts.
As an example, suppose someone wanted to learn about the Revolutionary War. A concept map might allow them to see all of the contributing factors—to see how they connect. This can help students see cause/effect relationships—it can help them organize a writing piece based on the organization of the map.
Virtual Field trips can be a nice opportunity for students to learn more about a content area in the context of a more multi-media experience. Some field trips can be very interactive—something I always appreciate—as students take on a more active role—something that generally promotes engagement. I used to enjoy browsing the Met museum with my sons when they were very young. There was a feature they really liked---you could click on a piece of art and save it to your own folder or area. They enjoyed being able to pick out art they would “keep.” Then, when we went to the actual building, they were especially excited to see if they could find their favorite art pieces to look at in person. A multi-media connection can be very helpful in students' successfully encoding information--they are more attentive and more likely to retain the information.
Note taking
I wanted to mention one interesting issue I often see with note taking. Often I'll see a student write everything that is said, regardless of its importance--and they expend so much effort on this, I worry that they are not actually processing the information. I see the same with highlighting--students will highlight an entire chapter--something which defeats the purpose of the highlighting. I find that taking effective notes is a skill that needs to be developed. I sometimes like to give students a skeleton upon which to work in terms of note-taking. I also like to guide them in what they might want to take down in their notes.
Technology provides some excellent tools for note-taking. The copy and paste feature makes it easy for students to identify important facts in online information and copy them to a document for later review.
Looking forward to reading others' thoughts on this week's topic.
Years ago we would have students do their brainstorming before writing on a spiderweb. The spider would be the topic and then the spaces created by the web would be where they would jot their ideas. Once they had listed all they could, they would color-code the details they had written and then use those ideas with the same color as their paragraphs. The same type thing was a tree with branches and then leaves. We thought we were being clever but it was just a 'pre-computer' age concept map!
ReplyDeleteThat is so true. I remember those spider webs--I also used to do class brainstorming at the board and just kind of race around trying to connect the ideas with my chalk and eraser.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting how technology can make easier some of our favorite "tried and true" techniques.
Thanks for replying to my posting.
Professor Krauss -
ReplyDeleteI wholeheartedly agree with you regarding note taking. Some students are visually overwhelmed by what's on the page, so they either highlight it all or nothing at all. When taking notes from a lecture, some students, as you commented, rush to write every syllable spoken, only to not learn or process a thing.
I have found and used a wonderful curriculum that teaches writing skills, but begins with note taking and the skills to pull the important information out of text, one sentence at a time. It takes practice, but is well worth the effort, and leads to extraordinary writing as well!
The curriculum is published by The Institute for Excellence in Writing, and the website is: http://www.writing-edu.com
Hello Professor Krauss!
ReplyDeleteI loved the virtual "Met" activities you shared, and how your children became cyber art collectors in the process! Although I have not yet used virtual field trips in my own classroom, I can predict that my students will be able to develop nearly the same sense of ownership and familiarity with places, artifacts and experiences as if they were there in person. Can't wait to find some great applications!
On note taking: Since my music classes are primarily performance-based, I don't often have the need to include or monitor this skill. However, years ago, I took a course in Art Appreciation at the local community college as a continuing-ed credit. I was so surprised that many of the young adults in the class seemed to be struggling with note-taking. I volunteered to be a confidential note taker for another student with learning needs. This really is a learned skill that needs to be taught. As an instructor, it is good to be reminded that not all students are able to multi-task (take notes and listen to an ongoing discussion). Offering a variety of strategies for note-taking and highlighting would be of great benefit. Sounds like a perfect companion topic to reading skills (main idea, key words, etc.).
Always love reading your posts! Carrie
Hi Professor Krauss,
ReplyDeleteYour comment on note taking made me remember a used book I had bought for an undergraduate class years ago. I would guess that at least 90% of the book had been highlighted by the previous owner.
When I was growing up, I never once had a class that taught me how to take notes. The closest thing we had was learning how to find the main idea from a paragraph. I would imagine that taking the time to teach students how to take notes would pay off tremendously. If students could spend less time trying to figure out how to take their notes, they would have more time to focus on the material.
Shannon Eno
Hi Professor Krauss,
ReplyDeleteYour comments on notetaking hit home with me. As a seventh grade reading teacher I find that one of the skills students find most difficult is summarizing a text. They need all the practice they can get in relation to identifying main ideas, as opposed to supporting details. With some learners it is such an issue that I have asked parents to pratice with them at home. For instance, at dinner, a parent may ask the child to highlight the most important information learned in a particular class that day, the moves that led to a winning goal in a soccer game, or the reasons why they did, or didn't, do well on a particular assignment. I believe this is helpful, not only as a practice measure, but because it illustrates for the learner the importance of this real world skill.The Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word, as delineated in our text, is a fun and interesting approach to this task that I intend to use immediately, as it offers a new perspective on what can be a boring task to twelve year olds(Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007).
Monica
Reference
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Hi Heather,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing that website. Helping students develop note-taking skills is something that will provide them a great advantage throughout their academic and career experiences.
Thanks again.
Hi Carrie,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your kind words. I love art very much and I'm always looking for ways to share this love with my sons.
As for note-taking--I will share that this was always a challenge for me as a student. I had a lot of trouble listening to a lecture and also writing---I was a lot better at just listening and trying to really remember---though come exams, I would be terribly stressed about having such poor notes. Over the years, I became better at quickly typing in key points, but it has taken a lot of practice. If I had some familiarity with the topic--if there was an overview before a lecture, I had a better sense of what the key concepts were. One approach I like to try for students like myself, is to give out a skeleton of key concepts and let them fill in the details or facts they think are interesting or worthwhile.
Thanks for replying to my blog.
Hi Shannon,
ReplyDeleteI so agree--often there isn't much time devoted to learning to take notes, but many students do need this help. I wonder if note-taking might be related to learning styles. I am very NF as a learner--and hopelessly disorganized. I'm forever looking for things because I've misplaced them, etc. This was true for me throughout school--I'd misplace important papers, assignments, etc. I often wish there was explicit instruction in organizational tasks---what may be intuitive for some learners isn't for all.
Thanks for replying to my blog.
Monica, I love your idea of having parents participate in the process of highlighting main ideas or key events from the child's day. This real world application for the skill should be very engaging for students and provide valuable practice.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing.
Virtual field trips are new for me. I live in a small city and any important museum or zoo is nearly three hours away. The possibility of taking my students to the Smithsonian Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the San Diego Zoo, just to name a few, is so exciting.
ReplyDeleteNote taking has always been an issue of discussion among language teachers. Our students find it very difficult to take notes. I found this highly interesting information on the Current Psychology Letters (Online).
Barbier, Roussey, Piolat and Thierry (2006) state that “When taking notes in second language, language mastering is of major importance. Students are indeed faced with many difficulties for at least two reasons. First, when linguistic skills are poorly automated, in other words when psycholinguistics processes require a large amount of attention and are not fluent, they prevent a fast transcription of information (Barbier, 1998, 2003, 2004; Ransdell & Barbier, 2002; Roca de Larios, Murphy & Marin, 2002). Second, when the metacognitive control of note-taking is restricted, note takers do not succeed in evaluating the reliability of the content of their notes with respect to former knowledge and competence already acquired in first language (Barbier, 2003, 2004; Barbier, Faraco, Piolat, Roussey, & Kida, 2003). These two sources of difficulties have been identified from the very low performance (quantitatively and qualitatively) observed among note takers in second language.” It will be very interesting to explore the online note taking resources mentioned in this course.
Miriam
Barbier M.L., Roussey J.Y., Piolat A. and Olive T., ”Note-taking in second
language: Language procedures and self evaluation of the difficulties “, Current psychology letters (Online, 20, Vol. 3, 2006). Retrieved May 23, 2009. http://cpl.revues.org/
Susan. Our county and school encourage the use of Cornell notes. I tried that with my math class and the students hated it and complained that lots of their teachers were requiring it. I stopped that and instead offered suggestions and options as I give notes. I often let them use their notes on quizzes, so they discovered for themselves what to include. In geometry, I had them construct the figures, label and add a few notes and that went well.
ReplyDeleteSusan,
ReplyDeleteYou touched me with the live of art you are trying to share with your sons. My mother had the same passion for the arts and shared her interests with me,as well. My first art museum experience was with my mom at he National Gallery, and I still remember the experience vividly. She was instrumental in nurturing my artistic talents, and making me feel special because it was a talent of mine. Keep it up with your sons.
Now, on the other hand, I have had difficulties relaying my love of art to my sons. You'd think I'd be better at it, huh? They do like to watch me draw and paint, though.
As I mentioned earlier, I am very excited about virtual tours in art museums. My only disappointment has been the fact that the information in relayed in written form. For middle school children it would be more effective to have both a written and recorded option. I will keep on searching to find a good place to start. I like the idea of combining the concept map with the virtual tour to keep the students' focused on the task at hand.
Miriam,
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean--these field trips open up so many possibilities for students to experience some of the places they might otherwise not be able to see. Another nice possibility is they can return to the "trip location" on their own later to revisit things they enjoyed.
Cathhgy---I love that idea of the "open-notes" quiz. I really like that it encourages students to review and create their own notes--which promotes understanding--but also that if, during the quiz, they forget a detail--they can still be successful if they have major conceptual understanding. I find that the open notes quiz is still a pretty reliable assessment--if students really are lost or unprepared--these notes do not help them, but they can help those students with test-taking anxiety to perform in a way that reflects what they know.
ReplyDeleteKim--I agree--having an audio component and more readable text would be really helpful--maybe a way to choose levels -- elementary, intermediate, advanced--which would make adjustments in the font size and amount of information included. The http://www.windows.ucar.edu/ sites have this feature--I really appreciate this option.
ReplyDeleteI bet your sons get to love art someday soon, especially if they like to watch you paint. I have a cute story related to this--for a while, both of my sons were obsessive about making mistakes in their art--one drop of paint in the wrong spot and they'd destroy whatever it was they were doing and give up on the project. No amount of reasoning with them on my part could change their minds.
Then one day, we had an artist come to the house to paint a mural on our fireplace. The boys watched him, and he would occasionally drip paint somewhere he didn't want it--and he told them--look--see that spot--it isn't a mistake--it is now a ladybug---and that other spot--that is going to become a cloud. Seeing that really made a difference and right after that, I didn't have any more problems with a small mistake leading to a big problem for them. (It's funny with kids--mom's can say something and it just doesn't convince them.) :-)