Week 7 Write Up
Part I-Chapter 14 reflection
Being an economics teacher the first idea from Chapter that could be applied in my classroom is the importance put on human capital. “”Human capital yields higher rates of return than physical capital in corporate settings. HPI has adopted at its core the maximization of human capital achievements.” (Reiser and Dempsey pg. 136) Over the last three years of teaching I have been trying to stress the importance of gaining a post secondary education in either a college or trade school to my high school students. The above quote helps me prove to my students that gaining the extra education allows for a person to be more productive in the corporate settings. The overall translation being that the more education you receive, the better chance you will be more productive and have the ability to make more money.
Another idea from the chapter that would help me in my classroom is the idea that, “human performance improvement is what we wish to achieve and human performance technology is the means we use to achieve it.” (Reiser and Dempsey pg. 137) This quote alone makes the whole chapter make sense. To me this means that technology is a key to success, but not the only thing. A great deal of students in my classroom stay connected to technology in some form or fashion from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed. This does not mean that all of this use of technology is working towards a higher performance though. In most cases the technology that is used to produce useful products and work is driven by a desire of a human to improve their performance. For me as a teacher this fits my saying of, “just because you know how to text, does not mean you know how to type.”
The last part of this reading that I could use in the classroom is Gillbert’s Behavior Engineering Model on pg. 140. In this model Gillbert states six different categories that affect work performance. Looking through all six of these categories, I see a great deal of reality. By using this model in an economics classroom the students could see the different types of stimulus, response, and consequences with in a work environment and the drive of an individual person. I always say to my students that no one does anything for nothing. This chart would help organize that thought and allow me to show the class what I am trying to teach.
Part II-Podcast Description
The podcast website that I have found is called the educational podcast network. It is a site that is trying to bring together many different subject matter podcast's into one website. The category that I decided to listen to and look at was Shades of Democracy. It gives a look at the different types of masks democracy can take. Teaching Civics and what is going on in the Middle East at the moment, it seemed to be an appropriate subject matter. I have been able to listen to these some of the podcasts at times, but some of the links do seem dead. So if you are looking around and find one of the dead links just keep searching.
Part III-Usefulness of a Podcast in the Classroom
I personally think that podcasting has two main values with in the classroom. The first would be the ability to help students catch up on information that have been absent over a period of time. Having your lessons/lectures put into a podcast and posted on a blog would allow students the ability to know what is going on in class and not feel so lost when they return. The second value to me of the podcast in the classroom is the help it could provide in helping students study. In a podcast the student could skip over information that they already know and go straight to the information that they need. To me this would cut down on useless time spent studying information and ideas that the students already know. Overall the podcast is a high tech tape recorder that can be posted on the web and accessed by anyone at any time. It seems to be so simple, but very useful.
No comments:
Post a Comment