STAR Legacy

I liked reading about the STAR legacy and seeing how it works with a lesson. It really helped me to see how they used the lesson about Chris' problems with bringing a plant into the US and trying to figure out why it was confiscated by finding out what type of plant it could be.

I have always tried to develop my training around the basics and building upon them. This is what I like about the STAR Legacy. It stated in the reading that it was like climbing a mountain. Start at the bottom and work your way up. The other thing I like was that students assess what they know so far and they build upon it. This way they are not being bombarded by information they already know, which can turn a student off of learning more about the topic.

I also like the fact that you are being a problem solver. I have always liked to figure out problems so I think that is why I like the problem based modules. To me it raises the curiosity of the student and helps them to want to learn versus someone telling them to learn it. It is a buy in by the student(s).

This module also helps to teach the student to self assess their own knowledge by finding out what works, what doesn't, and what they can improve upon.

Not only is the student viewing their own information but others as well. This helps students to figure out distinctions and patterns in what everyone already knows and where they need to go from there. It also helps individual students to notice things/ideas from other students that they normally wouldn't think about. It builds upon knowledge.

Also, testing is not so much for a grade versus understanding what the student understands and knowing where they need to improve. It gives feedback to the student on areas they need to keep working on. Instead of a teacher telling them what they need to improve upon it motivates the student by letting them figure out what they need to do.

The Going Public portion is also used to help a student reflect and reinforce upon the knowledge they learned.

Since I am a very visual learned, I was able to better comprehend the STAR Legacy by viewing some of the resources that Kevin provided in our lesson.  It helped to see the different media that was used to reinforce this particular module.

Well what else can I say...I liked this module!

Anchored learning

Revision made to Anchored Learning on April 29, 2010.

Anchored Learning is a cross between Goal Based and Problem Based Learning except it is more of a case study story where students use videos, internet tools, etc. to help solve the problem. The type of media that you can use depends on what type of problem the student needs to solve.

From different things that I have read about AI, students have the opportunity to role play while they investigate the problem. All the data that is needed to solve the story will be within the storyline.

I like the fact that real situational stories are being used. This helps a student to use past knowledge and apply it to a new and different situation. Realistic stories will help students later in life to be able to actually use the information they acquire from an activity like this.

Another thing that I like about this format is that students become interested in the topic at hand; therefore they are more apt to want to learn. Even when I was working with one example that was provided, I found that it was easy to do because the storyline made sense to me. I could picture myself in John’s situation, like I was the one who needed to save the money. It actually made me curious as to how much money he actually saved.

Goal Based Scenarios

From what I can understand so far concerning this model, I like it.  I would have to say that I am not one for the traditional way of education where teachers have to feed a bunch of information to students so that they can memorize it long enough to transfer it to a yearly test so that people think they learned something.  I wonder how much information they really acquire doing this.

The goal based scenarios seem to move towards having the students to learn how to instead of knowing.  Knowing about different information is great, however, if you do not know how to apply that knowledge then what good does it do? 

I also like the fact that you can take the information that you learned from one event and apply it to another one.  This is what real life is about, and when you can teach this to children at an early age then that can only benefit them.