Lesson 10: Demonstration Teaching

Like role-playing and pantomime of the dramatized experience, demonstration is also something very handy. It requires no elaborate preparation and yet as effective as the other instructional materials when done properly.

In Webster’s International Dictionary, it is define as, “A public showing emphasizing the salient merits, utility, efficiency, etc, of an article or product.” In teaching it is showing how thing is done and emphasizing of the salient merits, utility and efficiency of a concept, a method or a process or an attitude.

Guiding Principles(Edgar Dale 1969)

1. Establish rapport

• Greet your audience.
• Make them feel at ease by your warmth and sincerity.
• Stimulate their interest by making your demonstration and yourself interesting.
• Sustain their attention.

2. Avoid COIK fallacy (Clear Only If Known)

• Fallacy is the assumption that what is clear to the expert demonstrator is also clearly known to the person for whom the message is intended.
• To avoid the fallacy, it is best for the expert demonstrator to assume that his audience knows nothing or a little about what he is intending to demonstrate for him to be very thorough, clear detailed in his demonstration even to a point of facing the risk of being repetitive. 

Planning and Preparing For Demonstration-Brown (1969)

1. What are our objectives?
2. How does your class stand with respect to these objectives. This is to determine entry knowledge and skills of your students.
3. Is there a better way to achieve your ends? If there is a more effective way to attain your purpose, then replace the demonstration method with the more effective one.
4. Do you have access to all the necessary materials and equipment to make the demonstration? Have a checklist of necessary equipment and material. This may include written materials.
5. Are you familiar with the sequence and content of the purposed demonstration? Outline the steps and rehearse your demonstration.
6. Are the time limits realistic?

Point to Observe in the Demonstration-Dale (1969)

1. Set the tone for good communication. Get and keep your audience’s interest.
2. Keep your demonstration simple.
3. Do not wander from main ideas.
4. Check to see that your demonstration is being understood. Watch your audience for signs of bewilderment, boredom, or disagreement.
5. Do not hurry your demonstration. Asking questions to check understanding can serve as a “brake”.
6. Do not drag out demonstration. Interesting things are never dragged out. They create their own tempo.
7. Summarize as you go along and provide a concluding summary. Use chalkboard, the overhead projector, charts diagrams, PowerPoint and whatever other materials are appropriate to synthesize your demonstration.
8. Hand out written materials at the conclusion.

Questions to Evaluate Classroom Demonstration (Dale 1969)

• Was your demonstration adequately and skillfully prepared? Did you select demonstrable skills or ideas? Were the desired behavioral outcomes clear?
• Did you follow the step-by-step plan? Did you make use of additional material appropriate to your purposes- chalkboard, felt board, pictures, charts, diagrams, models, overhead transparencies, or slides?
• Was the demonstration itself correct? Was your explanation simple enough so that most of the students understood it easily?
• Did you keep checking to see that all your students were concentrating on what you were doing?
• Could every person see and hear? If a skill was demonstrated for imitation, was it presented from the physical point of view of the learner?
• Did you held students do their own generalizing?
• Did you take enough time to demonstrate the key points?
• Did you review and summarize the key points?
• Did your students participate in what you were doing by asking thoughtful questions at the appropriate time?
• Did your evaluation of student learning indicate that your demonstration achieved its purpose?

Actual Conduct of Demonstration

1. Get and sustain the interest of the audience
2. Keep the demonstration simple, focused and clear
3. Do not hurry nor drag out the demonstration
4. Check for understanding in the process of demonstration
5. Conclude with a summary
6. Hand out written material at the end of the demonstration

Good Demonstration is an audio-visual presentation. It is not enough that the teacher talks. To be effective, his/her demonstration must be accompanied by some visuals.

Lesson 9: Dramatized Experience

Dramatic- is something that is stirring, affecting, or moving.

Dramatic entrance- is something that catches and holds attention, and has emotional impacts.

Dramatized Experiences can range from:

• Formal Play/Plays- depict life, character, culture, or a combination of the three. They offer excellent opportunities to portray vividly important ideas about life.

• Pageants- are usually community dramas that are based on local history. An example is a historical pageant that traces the growth of a school.

• Pantomime-is an art of conveying a story through bodily movements. The effects of pantomime to the audience depend on the movements of the actors.

• Tableau- a picture-like scene composed of people against a background

• Role-playing- an unrehearsed, unprepared, and spontaneous dramatization of a situation where assigned participants are absorbed by their own roles.

• Puppets- an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a Puppeteer. Puppets can present ideas with extreme simplicity.

Types of Puppets

Shadow puppet- flat, black, silhouette made from lightweight cardboard shown behind a screen.

Rod puppets- flat, cut figures tacked to a stick with one or more movable parts, and are operated below the stage through wires and rods.

Glove-and-finger puppets- make use of gloves which small costumed figures are attached

Marionettes- flexible, jointed puppets operated by strings or wires attached to a cross bar and maneuvered from directly above the stage.

Lesson 8: Contrived Experience

Contrived experiences are the edited copies of reality and are used as substitutes for real things when it is not practical or possible to bring or do the real thing in the classroom. They are designed to stimulate real life situations.

Examples:

a. Model

• A reproduction of a real thing in a small scale, or a large scale or exact size- but made of synthetic materials.
• It is a substitute for a real thing which may or may not operational –Brown, et. al, 1969

b. Mock up

• An arrangement of a real device or associated devices, displayed in such way that representation of reality is created
• A special model where the parts of a model are singled out, heightened and magnified in order to focus on that part or process under study.

c. Specimen

• Any individual or item considered typically of a group, class, or whole.

d. Object

• May also include artifacts displayed in a museum or objective displayed in exhibits or preserved insect specimens in science.
  

e. Simulation

• A representation of a manageable real event in which the learner is an active participant engage in learning a behavior or in applying previously acquired skills or knowledge  -Orlich et. al, 1994

f. Game

Games are used in any of these purposes:

• To practice and/or to refine knowledge/skills already acquired
• To identify gaps and weaknesses in knowledge or skills
• To serve as a summation or review
• To develop new relationships among concepts and principles

Ten general purposes of simulations and games

1. to develop changes in attitudes
2. to change specific behaviors
3. to prepare participants for assuming new roles in the future
4. to help individuals understand their current roles
5. to increase the students’ ability to apply principles
6. to reduce complex problems or situations to manageable elements
7. to illustrate roles that may affect one’s life but that one may never assume
8. to motivate learners
9. to develop analytical processes
10. to sensitize individuals to another person’s life role

Why do we make use of contrived experiences?

• Overcome limitations of space and time
• To edit reality for us to be able to focus on parts or process of a system that we intend to study.
• To overcome difficulties of size
• To understand the inaccessible
• Help the learners understand abstraction

Lesson 7: Direct-Purposeful Experience

Direct-purposeful experiences are our concrete and first hand experiences that make up the foundation of our learning. These are the rich experiences that our senses bring from which we construct the ideas, the concepts, the generalizations that give meaning and order to our lives (Dale, 1969). They are the sensory experiences.

Examples:

• Preparing meals or snacks

• Making a piece of furniture

• Performing a laboratory experiment

• Delivering a speech

• Taking a trip

In contrast, indirect experiences are experience of other people that we observe, read, or hear about. They are not our experiences but still experiences in the sense that we see, read, hear about them. They are not firsthand but rather vicarious.

Why are these direct experiences described to be purposeful?

• They are experiences that are internalized in the sense that experiences involve the asking of questions that have significance in the life of the person undergoing the direct experiences.
• These experiences are undergone in relation to a purpose, i.e. learning
• It is done in relation to a certain learning objective.

What does Direct Purposeful Experience imply to the Teaching-Learning Process?

• Let us give our students opportunities to learn by doing. Let us immerse our students in the world of experience.
• Let us make use of real things as instructional materials for as long as we can.
• Let us help our students develop the five senses to the full heighten their sensitivity to the world.
• Let us guide our students so that they can draw meaning from the first hand experiences and elevate their level of thinking.

Lesson 6: Using and Evaluating Instructional Material

One of the instructional materials used to attain instructional objectives is field trip. For an effective use of instructional materials such as field trip, there are guidelines that ought to be observed, first of all, in their selection and second, in their use.

Selections of Materials

• Does the material give a true picture of the ideas they present? To avoid misconceptions, it is always good to ask when the material was produced.
• Does the material contribute meaningful content to the topic under study? Does the material help you achieve the instructional objective?
• Is the material aligned to the curriculum standards and competencies?
• Is the material culture – and grades – sensitive?
• Does the material have culture bias?
• Is the material appropriate for the age, Intelligence, and experience of the learner?
• Is the physical condition of the material satisfactory? An example, is a photograph properly mounted?
• Is there a teacher’s guide to provide a briefing for effective use? The chance that the instructional material will be use to the maximum and to the optimum is increased  with a teacher’s guide
• Can the material in question help to make a student better thinkers and develop their critical faculties? With exposure to the mass media, it is highly important that we maintain and and strengthen our rational powers.
• Does the material promote self – study?
• Is the material worth the time, expense and effort involved? A field trip, for instance, requires much time, effort and money. It is more effective than any other  less  expensive and less demanding instructional material that can take its place? Or is there a better substitute?

The Proper Use of Materials

You may have selected your instructional material well. This is no guarantee that the instructional material will be effectively utilized. It is one thing to select a good instructional material, it is another thing to use it well.

To ensure the effective use of instructional material, Hayden Smith and Thomas  Nagel, (1972) book authors on Instructional media, advise us to abide by the acronym PPPF.

Prepare yourself . You know your lesson objective and what you expect from the class after the session and why you have selected such particular r instructional materials. You have a plan on how you will proceed, what question to ask, how  you will evaluate learning and how you will tie loose ends before the bell rings.

Prepare your students. Set reasonably high class expectations and learning goals. It is sound practice to give them guide questions for them to be able to answer during the discussion. Motivate them and keep them interested and engaged.

Present the material. Under  the best possible conditions.  Many teachers are guilty of the R.O.G syndrome. This is means “running out if gas” which usually refers from poor planning. (Smith, 1972) using media and materials, especially if they are mechanical in nature, often requires rehearsal and a carefully planned performance. Wise are you if  you try the materials ahead of your class use to avoid a fiasco.

Follow – up. Remember that you use instructional materials to achieve an objective, not to kill time nor to give yourself a break, neither to merely entertain the class. You use the instructional for the attainment of a lesson objective. Your use the instructional material is not the end in itself. It is a means to an end, the attainment of a learning objective. So, there is need to follow up to find out if objective was attained or not.

Robert Gagne’s Nine (9) Instructional Materials in the Subject Facilitating Learning

There is no such thing as best instructional material

• Any instructional material can be the best provided it helps the teacher accomplish his/her intended learning.
• No instructional material, no matter how superior, can take the place of an effective teacher.
• Instructional materials may be perceived to the labor saving device for the teachers. On the contrary, the teacher even works harder when she makes good use of instructional material.
• “You should have a good idea of your destination, both in the over-all purposes of education and in the everyday work of your teaching. If you do not know where you are going, you cannot properly choose a way to get there.”

Lesson 5: The Cone of Experience

The cone of experience is a visual model, a pictorial device that presents bands of experiences arranged according to degree of abstraction and not degree of difficulty. The farther you go from the bottom of the cone, the more abstract the experiences become.

Direct Purposeful Movement- first-hand experience which serve as the foundation od our learning. We build up our reservoir of meaningful information and ideas through seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling.

Contrived Experiences- in here, we make use of a representative models or mock up of reality for practical reasons.

Dramatized Experiences- by dramatization, we can participates in a reconstructed experiences, even though the original event is far removed from us in time.

Demonstrations- it is visualized explanations of an important fact, idea or process by the use of photographs, drawings, films, display, or guided motions.

Study Trips- these are the excursion, educational trips, and visits conducted to observe an event that is unavailable within the classroom.

Exhibits- these are displays to be seen by spectators. The may consist of working models arranged meaningfully or photographs with models, charts, and posters. Sometimes, exhibits are “for your eye only”

Television and motion pictures- television and motion pictures can reconstruct the reality of the past so effectively that we are made to feel we are there.

Still pictures, recordings, radio- these are visual and auditory devices which may be used by an individual or a group.

Visual Symbols- These are no longer realistic reproduction of physical things for these are highly abstract representations.

 Verbal Symbols- they are not like the objects or ideas for which they stand. The usually do not contain visual clues to their meaning.

APPLICATION

Havard psychologist, Jerome S. Bruner, presents a three-tiered model of learning where he points out that every area of knowledge can be presented and learned in three distinct steps.

It is highly recommended that a learner proceeds from the ENACTIVE to the ICONIC and only after to the SYMBOLIC.

Three pitfalls that we should avoid with regard to the use of the Cone of Experiences

• Using one medium in isolation
• Moving to the abstract without an adequate foundation of concrete experiences
• Getting stuck in the concrete without moving to the abstract hampering the development of our students’ higher thinking skills.

Lesson 4: Systematic Approach to Teaching

        

Systematic Organize- relating to or consisting of a systemic. Methodical in procedure or plan (systematic approach). Logical, presented or formulated as a coherent body of ideas or principle (systematic thought).  Efficient, effective in class that is marked by thoroughness and regularity (systematic efforts).

Systematic Approach to Teaching– it is a network of elements or parts different from each other from each other but each one is special in the sense that each performs a unique function for the life and effectiveness of the instructional system.

Purpose of a System Instructional Design

• to ensure orderly relationships and interaction of human, technical and environmental resources to fulfill the goals which have been established for instruction.

The focus of systematic instruction planning is the student. It tells about the systematic approach to teaching in which the focus in the teaching is the students .

Systematic Instruction

Define Objectives- instruction begins with the definition of instructional objectives that consider the students’ needs, interest and readiness.

Choose appropriate methods- on the basis of these objectives the teacher selects the appropriate teaching methods to be used.

Choose appropriate experiences- based on the teaching method selected, the appropriate learning experiences an appropriate material, equipment and facilities will also be selected.

Select materials, equipment, and facilities- the use of learning material, equipment and facilities necessitates assigning the personnel to assist the teacher.

Assign personnel roles- Defining the role of any personnel involved in the preparation setting and returning of this learning resources would also help in the learning process.

Implement the instruction- with the instructional objectives in mind, the teacher implements planned instructions with the use of the selective teaching method, learning activities , and learning materials with the help of other personnel whose role has been defined by the teacher.

Evaluate outcomes- after instructions, teacher evaluates the outcome of instruction.

Refine the process- if the instructional objective was attained, teacher proceeds to the next lesson going through the same cycle once more.

 Examples of Learning activities

·         Reading

·         Writing

·         Interviewing

·         Reporting of doing Presentation

·         Discussing

·         Thinking

·         Reflecting

·         Dramatizing

·         Visualizing

·         Creating Judging

·         Evaluating

Lesson 3: Roles of Educational Technology

Technology can play a traditional role, i.e. as delivery vehicles for instructional lessons  or in a constructivist way as partners in the learning process. In  a constructivist way, technology helps the learner build more personal interpretations of life in her/his world. Technology is a learning tool to learn with not from. It makes the learner gather, think, analyze, synthesize information and construct meaning with what technology presents

• Technology as tools to support knowledge construction

1.       For presenting learners’ ideas, understandings and beliefs

2.       For producing organized, multimedia knowledge bases for learners

• Technology as information vehicles for exploring knowledge to support learning-by-constructing

1.       For accessing needed information

2.       For comparing perspectives, beliefs and world views

• Technology as context to support learning by doing

1.       For representing and simulating meaningful real-world problems, situations and contexts

2.       For representing beliefs, perspectives, arguments, and stories of others

3.       For defining safe, controllable problem space for student thinking

• Technology as a social medium to support learning by conversing

1.       For collaborating with others

2.       For discussing, arguing, and building consensus among members of the community

3.       For supporting discourse among knowledge building communities

• Technology as intellectual partner

1.       For helping learners to articulate and represent what they know

2.       For reflecting on what they have learned and how they come to know it

3.       For supporting learners’ internal negotiations and meaning making

4.       For constructing personal representations of meaning for supporting mindful thinking

Whether used from the traditional or constructivist point of view, when used effectively, research indicates that technology not only  “increases students’ learning, understanding, and achievement but also augments, motivation to learn, encourages collaborative learning and supports the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills” (Shacter and Fagnano, 1999)

Proper implementation of technology in the classroom gives students more “control of their own learning and … tends to move classrooms from teacher-dominated environments  to ones that are more learner-centered (Russel and Sorge, 1999)

Educational technology plays various roles. Form the traditional point of view, it serves as presenter of knowledge just like teachers. It also serves as productivity tool. With the internet, technology has facilitated communication among people. From the constructivist’s perspective, educational technology is a meaningful learning tools by serving as a learning partner