Makerspace

Makerspace is very useful for cultivating creativity and technical capacity of student, at the first students just does some simple project like coding by color to make movement of little robot. This project can teach students to learn some basic principle of programming and identifying different colors. Gradually let students to learn more and more complex projects for higher knowledge. In makerspace, students learn new knowledge by doing and it can enhance the effect of learning, because doing is better than hearing or seeing in the learning process, experience of doing can remind student to remember relevant information or knowledge they have stored in mind. As teachers we should know that’s the process of constructing. Even failed experiences are useful for students, they have already known what they did wrong and won’t make same mistake in same situation. Once students possess enough fundamental skills and knowledge, they are able to make their own creations and innovations by inspiration from normal life or learning process.

It’s very normal that meet lots of challenges during building a makerspace because will take lots of money to buy machines and equipment. And there also need professional people in makerspace. Some problems can be solved by collaboration and discussion of student, but they can’t handle everything by themselves, they still need professional staff.

Learning by doing

Dewey insisted that education begins with experience and it also is a social process, I totally agree with that, first of all, learning by doing is much more efficient than hearing and seeing, we usually say genuine knowledge comes from practice, so the best way to learn is doing by ourselves. And all we learned in school should be prepared for the future social life, we are socialized and we can’t get away from society. School have duties on teaching students to adapt society and live better in both spiritual and physical rather than inflexible knowledge.

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Cognitive development

Piaget proposed there are four stages during the children’s cognitive development. Kids will get different cognitive abilities in these stages, every stage is very important for specific cognition. If they lost that chance and didn’t get any cognition in the key stage, it will be very hard or impossible to get those kinds of cognitions back. Parents should notice that their children have entered into learning period before they go to school. In that time, they play a very important role for children's learning and cognitive development. It is very necessary for parents to learn how to develop  better cognition of their own kids.

Eight intelligences

         Gardner thinks people have eight types of intelligence, I agree with that, furthermore, there are differences between eight intelligence even they belong with same person. For example, I knew some of my friends have weakness on musical intelligence, some people they can’t learn foreign language well. As teachers, they must consider that and give enough patient and help to students, it’s necessary to find a balance spot of these differences. Of course, teacher can’t only teach one type of intelligence in their class.

Presenting Instructional Content

In the past, we don’t have technologic devices to support different types presentation except for basic verbal information, unless teacher has enough time to paint or draw. Nowadays almost classrooms have independent multimedia system to help teachers do different presentations of content. The way of presenting instructional content should be deeply laid, for example teachers can make a diagram to show how did they arrange this course and let students know straightly what can they learn in this class.

Also different subject teachers should know how to combine their teaching subject with presentation with different styles. As a Chinese teacher, they can make a good declamation to guide student into a poetic imagery to experience as the author and get a better understanding of article. For P.E teacher, they might need a video to show the content or make action modeling by themselves. If you are math teacher, you might think you don’t need any other types of presentation just one blackboard. Actually math teacher should work harder to hold students’ attention because methectic learning is a little boring. Math teachers can use multimedia to introduce some math stories or culture to make class more interesting.

Motivating students

 In my comprehension, I think motivating students is just rewarding their effort or reinforcing what they have done. After seeing the official evaluation, I know rewarding and reinforcing are just the part of motivating. Besides teachers should pay attention on those students who aren’t active, once they give some feedback teachers need to show more concern for encouraging them become more confident and positive in the class. Evaluator mentioned that the teacher doesn’t connect the concept of how the finding the area of a circle could be used in the students’ lives. It makes me understand the true meaning of motivating students, sometimes it means give a stimulation to students for sparking their thoughts or what they have learned. Also motivating can remind students how to connect what they are learning with their experience. This would make knowledge become meaningful to their cognition and stay longer time in students’ mind.