Wednesday, September 10, 2014

What do you think?

I like that question, "What do you think?",  much better than, "This is the answer."  I want my students to learn how to THINK!  My own children will tell you that when they were young, and asked me a question, I would often say, "What do you think is the answer?"  (This did not always go over well!)  This trimester I am teaching Web Design, and we start with learning XHTML code.  Experimentation is key.  Try putting something into the editing page: a hexadecimal color code, a new tag, an attribute for an image, guess what might happen, then save it and refresh the web page to see what actually did happen.  We learn a lot more from experimentation than from just copying and memorizing. Thinking for yourself and experimenting will often lead to mistakes. Mistakes are an important part of learning, and actually develop neurological connections which lead to more learning!  (See this article from the Khan Academy for more.)  So, the next time your child asks you how to spell something, or what the answer is to a math problem, try answering, "What do you think?"