Week 5 Reflections

This week has really been enlightening. I learned a lot about open-ended learning environments. It is unfortunate that I have been surrounded by this type of equipment for awhile and did not know the value in them and did not know how they could be used in the classroom. The Mapmaker's Toolkit mentioned by Alessi and Trollip (2001) is one of many types of software in which I aquired when I moved into another classroom. When I first saw the software, I thought of it only to be used to reward students; I saw it more as a game and nothing to be taken seriously. I realize that I have this type of software at home for my own kids. One of my sons like the Truck Driver USA CD-ROM. It allows him to decide what he wants to deliver to different companies around the USA; he must decide the best route to take and must determine what time (zone) he will arrive at his designations. The game allows him to interact with a GPS and other tools. He gets penalized and have to pay fines for accidents, speeding, and having his truck over the required weight limit. He can even connect to the Internet to get research information on the things he may be interested in delivering. I think it is neat because he has to use critical thinking skills, trial-and-error, math, reading, history, and science.

It seems as though interactive games, which can be on CD-ROM or Playstation, such as The Sims fall into this OLE. It comes with no direction, but offers many options. We have an entire classroom set of OLEs, such as GeoSafari and a history one (I forget its name) that enable students to construct their own knowledge or apply what they have learned. I know the history CD-ROM presents different events in history and requires the learner to make decisions. They are able to see the outcomes and later read how their decision compares to similar ones made in that particular setting. The only drawback is that I can't really use this type of OLE as a teaching tool because there are not enough computers in the classroom for everyone and I cannot track what the learner has gained. For now it seems as though OLEs are unstructured and meaningless because they are so open. My goal is to find ways in which I can make OLEs meaningful teaching and learning tools; to do this I must read and interact with these tools first.

The OLE scavengerhunt was fun. There were so many of them that I got off track a few times. The one I put in my post is very useful to me because it allows students and teachers to interact internationally. The projects included on the online OLE has many projects dealing with social and environmental issues and it taps into many subject areas.