blog post 14

For the choice of this blog I chose to read Psuedoteaching: MIT Physics. We will start out with the question of " What is Psuedoteaching?" Psuedoteaching is when you yourself as a teacher are giving a lecture and just feel as if it is so phenomenal and that your students are getting a great lesson taught to them and yet you look at your students and realize that they have not comprehended one word that you have just said. Bummer huh?! I am a hands on learner and sitting through class lectures does not help me. Seeing a teacher actually do what is being taught helps me learn better. When I think back of high school, I had many psuedoteachers. I would always wonder, "well they showed me in class how come I STILL don't get it?!" Pure example now that I look back.
In this blog was given an example teacher and video of Professor Walter Lewin who teaches Physics at MIT demonstrating some excellent lectures and movements of Physics. Lewin put in 40 hours for one lecture and would then practice the lecture and demonstrations three times before doing it in front of his students. For all the time put into the lectures you would think that the students would have gotten something out of it, but they didn't. With Lewin's attendance rate dropping everyday don't you wonder if he ever thought to himself of why it was dropping.
What did MIT do about the large percentage of drop rates and failing? They created TEAL, which stands for Technology Enhanced Active Learning. With the usage of TEAL, the classrooms got rid of chalk boards and replaced them with white boards. With the white boards the students would also have white boards and be able to interact with the teacher and work problems out and such. With the help of white boards, being a visual learner like myself is better for learning than just hearing what should be done.
I think that with students being interactive in the classroom environment it will make them want to learn. Even with SMART boards today and being in the classroom when the teachers use them, the students are eager to get up and go answer a question or move something or write on it! Having students sit at their desk for seven hours of their day and being taught bores them. Children have very little attention spans, but having the children interacting with you while you do your lecture or lesson is what will make the students more involved. I say all of this now, and hope that I stick to my word in having children being involved in the classroom and me not falling back into the category of a psuedoteacher. Wish me luck guys!