May 3-7, 2005
Thesis Presentations
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| New Projects, Young People | ||
|---|---|---|
| Author(s): | Tali Padan |  |
| Instructor: | Hechinger, Nancy | |
| Class: | Final Project Seminar (Wed.) | |
| URL: | http://stage.itp.nyu.edu/npyp | |
| Documents: | NPYP(JPEG) | |
| Keywords: | technology, education, constructivism, hands-on, learning, students, teaching, video, documentary | |
| \"New Projects, Young People\" proves that a hands-on approach to learning is beneficial to high school students,
and technology supports this kind of learning. | ||
| \"New Projects, Young People\" proves that a hands-on approach to learning is beneficial to high school students, and technology supports this kind of learning. This hands-on approach was inspired by the idea of constructivist learning. The idea of constructivism is that the student is an active learner in the process of taking in information and gaining knowledge. In other words, the students construct their own knowledge through interacting with their environment and gathering information. Learning is then the process of engaging in the experience and building understanding and knowledge. To prove this, I have documented a group of high school students from Independence High School in New York. A group of ten students from this school were working with students from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. I have followed their progress as they came up with an idea for a movie and then made it. In the final documentary, I have shown changes in the students from the beginning to the end of the program. My aim was to investigate changes in their knowledge, collaboration skills, motivation, articulation, confidence and general attitude. | ||
| Personal Statement: | Having spent two years at ITP, I came to appreciate the general philosophy and approach to learning that takes place in this program. The approach is generally using technology for creativity, expression and art. ITP offers no classes about the technology itself. For me, this was a very inspiring learning environment, which was new to me. In conjunction with my ITP studies, I also worked at different high schools around New York City, teaching Robotics or Video, as well as exposing students to what can be done using technology. I had little teaching experience before this, and I found that my teaching style was similar to the ITP philosophy.
In a Robotics program I co-taught over the summer, students were fascinated by the use of technology and excited to apply it using their own ideas. They learned to work together, take responsibility for their work, and guide their own learning. This was different from the way their normal classrooms were held. At first I thought that it was the technology that made the program successful – or being able to use the technology in a creative way. This was certainly one of the reasons. In addition to this, the learning environment and the approach taken by teachers was another factor. With our support, the students guided their own learning. For example, if a student was interested in singing, we would start a discussion about sound and putting together a song. We had two guest speakers come speak about the musical instruments that they built and how they programmed the sound using the computer. Additionally, in accordance with the interests of the students, we brought in the character designer of a well-known video game character named Parrapa the Rappa. The students loved this, and gained insight into the business world of the video game industry. They learned about different possibilities for a future career. As the students were building robots and listening to guest speakers, they were also documenting their work on websites. Each group of students made their own website and learned about web design and html. We left it up to the students to choose when they would work on Robotics or web design. This flexible and easygoing approach did not always work. The students were used to a structured environment, where they are graded and marked by their conduct. With our approach, students were given more freedom. Sometimes the students thrived under this freedom while at other times the class would be a bit chaotic. The theory of constructivism comes closest to the way that I taught that program. I would like to see how this student-centered, student-driven learning, combined with technology, could have an effect on a student’s learning. | |