W07 journal

• What are we trying to accomplish with STEM education and how can we apply the ideas from Daniel Pink's talk on motivation?

STEM education is all about getting students to think and apply their education to the subjects which many tend to shy away from. We want students to feel energized when they understand something and use that information to apply it to new scenarios and problems. Aside from encouraging them to delve into and hopefully become interested in science, technology engineering and math, we want them to become attracted to them to a point in which they are interested in pursuing and expanding their knowledge and even coming up with new, innovative ideas or things. We need to incorporate intrinsic motivation in our students through showing them just how much we value their thinking and ideas - extrinsic rewards are useful and do help, but only for some tasks and should not be used consistently. 

• How might we apply his elements of a new business operating system to STEM education?

Again, the goal here is to move away from extrinsic rewards and towards intrinsic rewards. We want students to genuinely be interested in their education and in taking the things they are learning and applying them to the types of situations they will encounter in their future daily lives.

As an application of what we know about learning, let's consider the Principles and Practices of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

• How do these principles and practices relate to what you've learned from reading How People Learn?

What stands out to me the most after viewing the videos and our readings is that there are different types of learners out there - therefore we should not just stick to one method of teaching. Our goal should be to create way of educating that incorporates various aspects and will reach all learners despite of what 'type" of learner they were at one point considered to be. Because all learners are different and unique our methods should mirror that so that we can ensure that all students have an opportunity to grasp the concepts we are teaching them .

• How do these principles and practices resonate with the perspectives on STEM learning (e.g., conceptual change, models & modeling, social cognitive, situated learning)?

When we looked at these models, it was clear that regardless of the root of the principle, all of them incorporated student centered activities in which the students are in control of their learning. The UDL videos also focused on this - having students setting goals for themselves and self-regulating their learning. One of the main goals emphasized in UDL education was to teach students  how to monitor their own learning so that they would become lifelong learners.

• How are the guidelines for UDL related to being a STEM learner? How about to being a STEM teacher?

Since we have discovered that there are multiple types of learners and we are gearing our teaching methods to reach these different types of learners. As educators we are striving to teach our students to not jsut learn and reciprocate a skill but to explore how to apply it in real world situations. We are encouraging them to expand their knowledge through exploration, so that they may learn in a way that means the most to them. In order to do this we want to  create an environment in which the students feel comfortable in discussing their thoughts and ideas regardless of how different or unique they may be. As a STEM teacher we should strive to reach all our students in an environment where they feel comfortable doing so so that they can become lifelong learners and active thinkers, just as the UDL guidelines show as well.