Chapter 5 Log

This chapter of the book is very timely. In our science class on Wednesday, we are turning in a paper about models and how they can be used to teach. It's amazing how our classes line up at times!

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I was turned onto the idea of concept maps at a very early age because my parents are both teachers. For years I used a standard concept map, but started making my own when I got to high school. I think that concept maps really helped me to understand what I was learning and to synthesize the information, and I think being able to use online concept maps like Semantica and Inspiration or Kidspiration is a great privilege that I wish I had when I was in school. I am really going to encourage my future students to concept map whenever possible. If I have an IWB I'd love to do a class concept map at the end of each topic.

Spreadsheets are another powerful tool, and is something I think isn't used as often as it should be. I didn't even learn how to work and manipulate Excel until I took EME2040 here in my sophomore year. Once I did, I found out how valuable spreadsheets can be for calculations and organizing information. I started doing many calculations in spreadsheets after I learned how to do this, and I began to use spreadsheets whenever I needed to make graphs. (As a note and a tie-in to current events, I just read an article today that Google Docs has now updated their word document software to include equations, something that other word processors don't have. Perhaps this will make students realize how valuable having equation computation at their fingertips can be.) In my own classroom in the future, I'd like to encourage students to use spreadsheets in math and science problems, as well as any time a graph needed to be made for history or any other topic.

I had never heard of nor had any experience with expert systems. It seems very interesting and something I would love to program and play around with. I did a quick search of Google but didn't find anything that would allow me to quickly program something, so I'll have to look deeper in the future. edit: After the class presentation, I realize that I do have some experience with expert systems but never really knew what they were.