EDC 665 - Week 9 Blog

From your experience in OMET thus far, what design practice has resonated with you the most? Why?

The design practice that has resonated with me the most through OMET is creating learning experiences (or "adventures") that really make an impact on your learning. That sounded vague... but my explanation is here:

I believe that creating learning experiences for anyone that allows them to be active in their learning is key. Regardless of how the plan is set up, the curriculum should be taught with activity involved. For example, I was teaching about the gold rush yesterday and we were discussing how strenuous working as a gold miner must have been. We all got out of our chairs, and tried to pan for gold as long as we could before our legs and backs started to ache. While it was a silly simulation, my students really won't forget the laborious work the 49'ers went through.

Group projects are also fantastic for students to be engaged in. Students teach each other an incredible amount. My favorite example of this is teaching math. I teach an advanced group of students and I love hearing them talk about math with one another. One student asks how their partner got the answer they did and the learning begins. "I changed the 6(6) to 6x because I was trying to show that it will cost 6 dollars for any amount of weeks, and x can stand for the number of weeks..." etc. Especially in math I value learning experiences that are rich in explanation such as these.