Learning tools

Debates: A debate is a formal discussion on a particular point with two or more people. A debate is normally help between two opposing teams, a team that is for the argument and another who is opposed to the argument. 

Strength: Debating allows students to think about an aspect or perspective they may have not thought about. Debates promote self-responsibility as each student is in charge of their own work and ideas. If there is two or more people in a group, debating will improve team work, especially is the team is trying to win people over.  

Weakness: False dichotomy (support both sides rather than one). The problem with this is the fact that the point of a debate is to prove a single point, not to support both. An individual may say they do not support that they will say, which is acceptable, but they cannot prove both points. 

Gamification: The process of turning educational content into a game. The games that can be converted into educational tools include Kahoot, Minecraft and Jeopardy. Gamification promotes co-operation as well as competition.  

Strength: Gamification allows for students to express their creativity other more ways. Also, students will most likely be more interested in the games rather than actual work. This also gives students instant results such as Kahoot, where you find out if you were correct or not instantly. 

Weakness: With the new generation they already have a decreased attention span. Therefore, giving them an option of games, when returning to real work their attention span will further decrease. Another problem is that not every teacher has access to a computer or internet, therefore this teaching method is unusable.  

Independent Work: Students have control over how they learn. As well as they dictate how fast they want to learn the material. Students learn by their own actions rather than that of the teacher’s. 

Strength: Students are given the liberty to do as they please. Students have control over their own success or failure. This also encourages students to be more ambitious as well as more responsible for their own actions. 

Weakness: Students may fall far behind the rest of the class if they procrastinate in their studies. Another downfall is that students may become manipulative and not actually do the work when they say they have.  

The way I can use these in my future classes is I can use each of them depending on the maturity of the group. If the group is very hard working and determined (such as an AP class) I would try to promote Independent work. But gamification lessons would be a sort of reward for the class working hard. Then debating would be useful for normal class days when doing a reading a novel, some people agree with the character from a novel and the others do not. It would be used to keep the students on their toes with the readings as a debate could spark out of no where.