Reflection

 From reviewing my peers' blogs, I was made more acutely aware about the ways to mix traditional classroom activities such as readings and labs with the technologies and simulations available online. In my lesson I had been very focused on having a simulation/ exhibit feature in the explore or explain section, but was intrigued to see technology integrated as a powerful extension (a great way to provide students with the motivation to explore the sites and simulations outside of class as I had been mentioning over and again on my own blog.) I really admired Ana's work on her blog, especially the lesson plan which has students working with a variety of kinds of technologies within the context of a contextualizing question. (Side note: I really need to work on thinking of those overarching and contextualizing questions that frame the lesson. XD)

Finally, from reading what David had to say on his blog about the role of simulations, my mind was brought back around to the idea of the flipped classroom. David cautions that "the simulation itself should be brought in either at the end of the lesson as an extension or as a useful link to be posted on a class site"; moreover, that "students should...conduct a hypothesis investigation before playing with the program" which would ultimately be used to "strengthen their understanding" (Wu). This view features the classroom as the main location of learning and gradually reaching out to the internet. I flipped this idea of thinking and pondered if some simulations have the necessary content information for students to learn on their own. After all, a goal of education is to build lifelong learners; could we potentially flip the roles, so that class scaffolds students so that they have the basic knowledge and resources to utilize these simulations at their maximum learning potential.

I reviewed the following blogs by my classmates: 

Ana Nguyen: http://anaeater.blogspot.com/

David Wu: http://wu-shifu.blogspot.com/