Journal 6 - Learning & Leading with Technology

Mapping Students Minds by Ariel Owen

This article looks to be an excellent example of incorporating technology into the lessons plans to enhance the learning experience. The students are eased into using the tool. I liked having them first do the actual visit to the site to collect the data and then have them input and analyze the data making it very real to them rather than just some numbers pulled off a website not corresponding to anything real for the students. The tools and methods are refined by the teacher, for example, going from manual entry in two steps to using the Palm to enter directly to the database. The teacher gave some direction on how to use the tool and then re-schooled herself to step back and let the student’s figure things out for themselves and self-correct rather than taking the easier path of directing the students to the desired answer. The maps progressed from simple to quite complicated in stages rather than all at once giving students a chance to make connections and analysis deeper than they would have in a single pass at the mapping.

1. How else could casual mapping be used in an education environment? This tool would seem to lend itself to the character building part of education. Students could be posed ethical dilemmas that they could then map positive and negative impacts of the choices they make.

2. Was there really value to aid an “absurd” version of the presentations by the students to the city council? It allows the students to learn to take many possibilities into account and to adapt to unexpected changes in direction on projects or in life. Eventually they will learn that “absurd” variations to us, quite often do actually get proposed and implemented by government agencies.