Weekly Reflection (Wk 11)

In today's lesson, I learned about the following:
1) Students as Designer: Project-based Learning
2) Hands-on activity using MASH (Microsoft Agent Script Helper)

From point no.1, I learned about the following:
1) Students are good designers of learning themselves. They can decide on how much they want to learn and how extensive the involvement is. This can be achieved by allowing students to engage in Project-based Learning (PBL).
2) When guiding students to engage in Project-based Learning, we should:
a) Focus on the central concepts and principles of a discipline.
b) Involve students in problem-solving investigations and other meaningful tasks and allowing them to work autonomously to construct their own knowledge.
c) Inform students that the end products of the project must be realistic.
d) Encourage collaboration between students and let them take control over their own learning/work (When students embark on a project, they assumed the role of professionals such as experts or scholars).
e) Focus, in depth, on central ideas and salient issues and ensure that the Content is authentic and relevant to students’ lives.

We learned that just having information does not solve a problem. It is more difficult that that. If we simply just provide information to students, there is no difference from asking them to read a textbook. We learned that Problem-based Learning is not the same as Project-based Learning; the former focuses on a real problem that affects content syllabus and takes a longer time to complete, while the latter emphasizes on investigating a phenomenon and takes a shorter time to complete. In Project-based Learning, very often students discover that there are a few partial solutions to an issue. These solutions are to be discussed, analyzed, and evaluated. Students are to find the most feasible solution through discussion (Social Constructivism).

Scene is also related to Project-based Learning. When using Scene, we can use one Scene to portray the problem background, and use another to show the essence of the solutions (what these solutions meant to solve). There must be implications in the Scene. A trigger event should be present and it must be real e.g. how does a five-day work week affect students’ activity. This issue has a direct implication on students. We should then come out with problems that relate to students’ learning e.g. calculate the number of hours spent in 5-day work compared to last time. We should also provide scaffolding for students in their project.

We then have hands-on activities in using MASH. In this lesson, we learned how to add a pop-up window showing a GIF file to the script. The script is as follow:

Set Win1=window.open ("image1.gif", "f1", "menubar=no, toolbar=no, left=300, top=100, width=500, height=300")

To close the window, we can add "win1.close" to the script.

Mr. Woo also talked about some technical issues. The reason why we use VBSCRIPT is that there is a default debugger in Windows XP. We will be able to know where the script goes wrong by using the debugger.

What I learned most from this lesson: the problems we presented to students must be real and related to their lives.