Reflection 7

STL Teaching 1

From this video you can see that my STL was technology in the field of agriculture. At first I was stumped on what to teach and I had no idea what kind of advancements there were in technology in agriculture. But i figured since I am from Idaho and my uncle is a farmer, I could figure out something. SO..... I did some research and I found one thing that caught my interest. Precision Farming!! Or GPS farming as it is known as. I thought it was interesting how it could control the tractor and tell it at which point would be best for planting and for tilling and so forth. I like the idea of how it being so precise that if makes farming more manageable and there is less room for mistakes and farmers could save money as well.

So my plan was to show the video above to the class and talk for a minute about how this process could help farmers plan out their fields and their crops and then we would do the activity. At first I thought that 20 minutes was way too long!! But as I started planning my lesson I realized I wouldn't have a lot of time to do most of what I wanted. But as I was teaching I felt the first part went pretty well and most of the class seemed to be listening to my lesson and most were answering questions. I still need to work on proximity and calling on people when no one answers at first. But after we all talked about the good points of gps farming, we did the activity I came up with. I had them break up into 3 groups and act out how GPs farming works. In the groups they have 2 satellites and one receiver who gathers all the data and then a tractor who plants the seeds and tills and fertilizes. They had to follow the map they were given and do all that it said. At first the activity was rocky and the instructions I gave weren't as clear as they should have been. I shouldn't have let them break up into groups until after I gave them all the instructions. I think it went pretty well after everything was explained.

Over all I think I did pretty good and that my point was well known why I was teaching what I was teaching. But I do need to learn to explain activities better and realize not everyone knows as much as I do about what I am teaching and I cant just expect them to fill in all the blanks. But that is why we practice right?!