LOCAL WORKSHOP ACTIVITY 2

Questions about Learning:

Thinking about your teaching and learning goals for a particular teaching session or classroom activity.

Using this historical map of Youngstown, Ohio from the Library of Congress website, students complete an exercise in pairs. The computer is used to zoom in and out so that they can select which part of the map they want to investigate.

Watch the video of Sherry reflecting on the goals of the exercise.

56K modem

T-1/DSL

Depending on the speed of your Internet connection, please, choose one of the above versions of the video. You must have the Apple Quicktime plug-in to view the video. Please download it at: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/

Sherry's goals for the exercise were the start of her researchable question in the scholarship of teaching and learning. She hypothesized that doing this map exercise in pairs, in front of computers, would:

• help students slow down
  

• get students to look more closely at this electronic map than they might at a paper one
  

• increase their sense of the map as a "thick" object--that is, as an object capable of multiple interpretations and as a text capable of rich reading
  

• make them more aware of their own knowledge (more self-reflexive) and more inclined to build on their local knowledge of Youngstown.

How do these issues play out in your courses? How important are they?

What strategies do you use to get students to slow down, to look more closely, to become aware of themselves as learners?