Final Project, Presentation due November 29, 10 minutes

A theory is a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action (Merriam Webster)

Learner-centered Project Presentation: An Experiential, Engaged Learning Unit

Use this space to ask questions and provide feedback

Each student will produce a culminating project, a teaching unit, for which he or she will use theory to discuss practice that is student-centered. Projects will be presented at the end of the semester.

  1. Select a unit (you may not use a unit from another course) to revamp or create
  2. Submit a 100 word rationale for its selection (due November 8th). DO NOT GO OVER 100 WORDS. You don’t want to start writing the unit here—use this to get your thoughts together on the selection.
    1. Briefly describe the unit topic
    2. Why teach it (besides the fact that it is required)
    3. How have you taught it in the past? Or why haven’t you taught it before?
    4. How do you envision the unit as student centered?
  3. Start reading and journaling, concept mapping, and jot listing your thoughts on the unit.
  4. Create a 10 content slide PowerPoint presentation (plus title and reference slides, for a total of 12), responding to the following slide titles:
  5. Presentation should be approximately 10 minutes, MAXIMUM = 12 minutes

Slide One: Unit name, subject, grade level, student name, course, date

Slides Two and Three: Overall Description

Slides Four and Five: Theoretical Framework

Slides Six, Seven, and Eight: Student-centered activities

Slide Nine: Assessment

Slide Ten and Eleven: Concerns, Questions, Considerations

Slide Twelve: Reference

Two goals here:

  1. To move a teacher-centered unit to the student-centered realm (use the unit that needs the most work); show us a unit that has relevance, purpose, and complexity
  2. To share your thoughts and efforts with your peers

I am not interested in seeing your lesson plans as much as I want to see your ideas and how they are driven by theory. Use bullets to guide us, while you present your discussion; keep graphics to a minimum.

To think and ponder what is meant by “learning theory,” go to

http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-learn.htm

This article has a great little matrix with the “biggies” —major education theorists and their theories listed. It is conceivable that any of you would be drawn to them all except for the “behaviorist” theory—this is the MOST prevalent theoretical application in schools today and is usually not associated with “student-centered” approaches to practice.

Recommended site for an overall collection of learning theories (to get you started):

http://www.emtech.net/learning_theories.htm

This is a good one, too. It has Kolb listed –his stuff might seem a bit intense at first, but when you spend time looking at it closely, it makes a lot of sense, especially for student-centered approach to teaching and learning. It will work for most of you. http://changingminds.org/explanations/learning/learning.htm

For pointers on font size, layout, etc, go to http://www.uth.tmc.edu/schools/video/video/develop.htm

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