A Real World Connection

After reading the article, "What's It Like Where You Live?" I realized how it impotant it is to combine that real world experience with the classroom work. This is not a novel idea, but rather one that seems obvious. You teach a lesson, study a subject; then do some work in class and some real world examples. However, the point that I found interesting about this article was that they suggested that the students should have the real world experience BEFORE going back to the classroom to study the topic in other forms, such as technology! I know many teachers and schools who stress that the real world exprience should come as an extension to something learned in the classroom. I find that the hands on exprience that the students in this article had prior to the classroom implentation, gave them the foundation to understand what was being asked of them, to understand the virtual fieldtrips and the multimedia projects. Since they explored their topic of biomes prior to those projects, they had the background knowledge to make the use of media a success. In terms of the types of media used, I found it very extensive. The class did not stop at simply looking at websites, but expanded it beyond to include videos, virtual biodomes, etc. I think this shows how far you can really take the technology component of the classroom!