Faculty Spotlight
December 2001 - January 2002: Euridice Silva-Filho
Transformation - without technology
Three
years ago the Center for Undergraduate Excellence sponsored a "Process
Education" workshop held during the fall break. Euridice received
valuable exposure to student-centered teaching, and he found that
this exposure challenged his previous pedagogy, a challenge he
welcomed. Before the workshops, he would search for effective websites
before meeting with his students. They would visit these pre-selected
websites and answer questions he had drafted. After the workshops,
he would ask students to explore websites and demonstrate their
findings to the entire class. He would offer them a theme such
as "What to do in Rio over the weekend," and they would
comb the Internet for sites dealing with plays, films, and festivals.
When they shared information with the class they had to evaluate the sites as effective, mediocre, and those to be avoided. Thus, the accuracy and the depth of the information became the focus. And the students did the explorations.
"The sky is the limit. Students can help you."
Going Wireless
Wanting to build upon his new understanding of active, collaborative learning, Euridice applied for a position in ITC's WISH project, with its focus on "wireless instructional strategies for the humanities." Here, he hoped to explore a new learning environment and to utilize the cooperative learning strategies he had been trying out.With the WISH Institute in the summer of 2001, Euridice began to explore other technology tools, such as PowerPoint, Daedalus, and Inspiration, as well as examining his own response to immersion in a multitude of powerful software programs.
As he learned the programs, he examined their effect on the learner's cognitive process. From that pondering, he suggests that PowerPoint is can be an ambiguous tool in terms of facilitating learning. The program offers many high-end features, but it also has a tendency to encourage conventional idea presentation: the ubiquitous bullet, for example. In the spring, he plans to ask his students to create class presentations based on their research.