Recommendations for the Next Future IT Camp

By participating in the course, I do have a few recommendations that I feel would make the course more effective for both the students and teachers of the course.  First and foremost, I feel that there should be more of an emphasis on hands-on experience rather than power points and other types of learning methods.  These teaching method tends to bore the students, and therefore major concepts could be ignored or misunderstood during the course.  Another thing that I feel would enhance the student’s interests in future careers in the field of IT is to have companies come and market for their jobs.  The whole purpose of attending college and attaining higher education is to have the options of better careers once ended.  Another thing that I feel would help both the students and the teachers are to create a five day camp, rather than a four.  By enabling the instructor to have an extra day, concepts do not feel as much rushed as a matter to be learned and incorporated.  Students would have more time to practice what they are taught and solidify concepts learned within the camp.  The final recommendation that I, personally, would recommend to future IT camps is to incorporate more coding into the curriculum.  Each or any of these recommendations in my opinion would make the summer camp more appealing to potential students of IT in the future.

9th Blog

Heutagogy was demonstrated into this camp because students became their own critique as the week of the course continued.  As students became more exposed to the concepts of the camp, they became naturally more confident in their personal abilities with technology. “Hase and Kenyon describe it as self-determined learning which is an extension to pedagogy and andragogy.” (I, 2009) Students became particularly confident as they became more comfortable with their IPADS.  Students were taught basic instructions of how to effectively use and navigate this new apps and programs.  As they progressed, students began to teach the instructors new things that they had discovered on their own, without any instruction from the instructors.  This high level of confidence came from the teacher’s critical reflections and lectured demonstrated during the first days of the camp.  This is a direct demonstration of one of the three dominant learning types in the field of technology; however, this was not the most prevalent of the three.

Blog 8

One of the most common patterns of learning distinctions of technology is that education has traditionally been seen as a pedagogic relationship between the teacher and the learner.  This means that the teacher has the ability to decide what the learner needed to know, and the mechanisms by which he’ll be taught the material.  This is a significant piece of literature, as its theories will be experimented in the curriculum of the summer technology camp.  In my experience with the summer technology camp of Lexington High School, the theories of andragogy were not the most common learning pattern; however, the theory of heautagogy proved to be the most common learning experience of the adult learners in the class.  This directly contradicted the prevailing common belief that andragogy is the most common learning pattern of adult students of technology.

Understanding Pedagogy, Andragogy, and Heutagogy

“Pedagogy typically refers to how the instructor facilitates the learning (the process) where the focus is on what the instructor does (how they design activities and content) as opposed to what the participants do or what they bring to the learning environment - teacher centered.” For pedagogy, we gave them ideas and topics to work on. We designed the activities and the contents of it so the camper had an idea of what they were going to do in the summer camp. We assume responsibility for making decisions about what is learned, and how and when something will be learned. The educational focus here is on transmitting, in a very teacher-controlled environment, the content subject matter.

“Andragogy is best understood as an adult learning concept popularized by Malcolm Knowles. It is based upon understanding the motivations behind learning. It is noteworthy to point out that the focus is upon the student and their intrinsic desire to create knowledge and an understanding that the instructor facilitates students’ self-actualization of their full potential.” The educational focus of this is on facilitating the acquisition of and critical thinking about the content and its application in real-life practical settings. The camper made had had some ideas of open sources but I asked them at the beginning and at the end of the camp, they did learn a lot about open sources.

“Heutagogy promotes the concept of self-determined holistic learning through critical reflection. The approach facilitates a flexible modality where the instructor shares resources and learners help design the course or path of learning. Heutagogy involves encouraging learners to become deeply reflective while developing their capabilities. Reflection focuses upon helping the learner understand how experiences affect their values, beliefs, goals, habits, conceptual frameworks, and previously held ideals and to contemplate ways in which the learner might expand their self-efficacy in these areas.” The approach has been proposed as a theory for applying to emerging technologies in distance education and for guiding distance education practice and the ways in which distance educators develop and deliver instruction using newer technologies such as social media. In an easier way of putting it, it is a self-determined learning process. An example of it would be when we have group of team works, they were all self-efficacy which they are knowing how to learn and they developed better communication skills and working wells with others. The projects they did were creative and also they apply knowledge to new and unfamiliar situations by being adaptable and flexible in approaches.

6th Blog

Today is the last day of the camp. As I was walking and checking on the status of the camper, it is going along very well. They got everything in place and starting to wrap things up. It has only been a few days but I had fun and as they are learning something new, I am also learning along with them. An open source like Ubuntu has really open up new ideas to these campers. They are having fun and enjoying the entire feature along with the coding too.

I am also having fun and this has been very entertaining to me. With this entire open source from softwares, hardwares, to open contents they are getting an understanding of what it is and they are building on it. The two campers that choose to work on editing pictures; I have shown them how to use the app snapseed to enhance their picturing editing skills. So they took all of what they had before and did a lot of editing to it. The after part is amazing because it looked very good. So today has been a fun day.

5th Blog

For the third day of the camp was more of a hand on all day projects. Each group consisted of 2 to 3 members and they were to choose a project to do so they can present to their parents tomorrow. Some of the topics to choose from were Ubuntu, iPad, or the robotic to work on. Through the day I made my round and asked on the progress of their project. They got a chance to get hands on the project and along with making new friends. I asked if they know each other already and some say no but a lot of them had already been since already. But they were doing well today. A lot of them finish the projects so they were asked to make a power point presentation on what they did not just with the project but share anything that is on their mind. Whoever did need help, I try to assist them as much as I can. But overall, they seem to be right now track and these campers are some bright students.

4th Blog

Yesterday started out as a wet day. As we were about 5 minutes in to the scavenger hunt, it started to rain on us. I felt bad for the two campers that were with me. They got soak and wet. I did too. But that didn’t stop them from it. So we went on and try to finish finding all the clues to the hunt. For the first time ever, I finally walk around campus. Since I have been here I only know a few buildings but now I also know where my accounting class for summer two is going to be at. But there is no parking around it so I am going to have to park far and walk to the building.

We had a good time. The two campers that were with me, they asked a lot of questions about the college life. I try to encourage one of the campers to continue his education after high school. So he did listen and gave me some feedback. We did walk for a good period and they were thirsty so I brought them some drinks and snacks to eat. We they did had fun and I did too. After we were done with the hunt we had lunch and a presentation on the open source by sparc. It was a good presentations and I thought it was a pretty cool work environment to work for.