To effectively integrate computers into teaching, students' thinking skills must be a priority. The goal is to align thinking processes appropriately with the software's function. By categorizing software by genre and matching it to the desired thinking skills, teachers can plan lesson activities that teach discrete skills as well as complex…

This article describes the nutrition component of a Home and Career Skills curriculum at Hommocks Middle School (Larchmont, NY) that includes the Breakfast Cafe Webquest, which encourages 7th graders to increase the amounts of fruits and vegetables in their diets as well as reduce serving sizes. Using this Webquest, students "help the Breakfast…

Social studies educators advocate discussion as an influential instructional method to encourage students to apply knowledge and develop higher-order thinking and understanding. The classroom reality, however, is that teachers only use the discussion method sparingly. Instead, teachers predominantly use a quasi-discussion form called recitation to…

This paper briefly outlines the evolution of ICT-based learning environments discussing some of the main aspects that have characterised such evolution (eg, technological evolution, changed cognitive and pedagogical frameworks, changed role assigned to ICT-based systems in education). The objective is to point out how the implementation of…

Educational experiences need to (1.) increase student activities inside and outside the classroom; (2.) promote knowledge acquisition and educational performance; (3.) increase group-based and cooperative learning; and, (4.) assist students in developing solutions to real-world, complex problems. To address these issues, this research blended…

This paper presents the results of part of an investigation carried out with fourth-level Spanish secondary education students (15 years old), in which we implemented a teaching unit based on problem-solving methodology as an investigation to teach genetics and human inheritance curricular contents. By solving open problems, the students…

This article describes the pitfalls of using key words to support students when problem solving, and provides an alternative way (quantitative analysis) to support students' sense-making. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

This article describes ways in which students develop schemas as they generalize and formalize patterns when solving related algebraic problems that involve size, shape, growth, and change. (Contains 7 figures and 3 tables.)

Worthwhile mathematical tasks not only prompt students to learn mathematics, they also prompt teachers to learn and improve their teaching in their own mathematics classrooms. When teachers use worthwhile tasks, they have to learn "what aspects of a task to highlight, how to organize and orchestrate the work of the students, what questions to ask…

This article describes the experience of teaching structural bioinformatics to third year undergraduate students in a subject titled "Biomolecular Structure and Bioinformatics." Students were introduced to computer programming and used this knowledge in a practical application as an alternative to the well established Internet bioinformatics…

The extensive use of commercial kits in molecular biology and biochemistry has prompted us to design a series of practical sessions to help students become familiar with the uses and limitations of pre-packaged assay systems. To facilitate an understanding of these assay systems and to promote reflection on their appropriate use, students…

The article analyzes a constructivist view of music education. A constructivist music classroom exemplifies deep learning when students formulate questions, acquire new knowledge by developing and implementing plans for investigating these questions, and reflect on the results. A context for deep learning requires that teachers and students work…

Strategy games can provide an interesting context for students to solve problems in an elementary mathematics classroom. The games are easy to learn, but finding a winning strategy exercises students to develop different methods to win the game.

Students in a fifth-grade general education class and a second-grade gifted class participated in the Triangular Bicycle Flags problem. The results indicated that providing students with geometric experiences at the correct van Hiele level is necessary for helping students move from one level of understanding to the next.

In this article, the author describes the process of writing a problem-based learning (PBL) problem and shows how a typical end-of-chapter accounting problem can be converted to a PBL problem. PBL uses complex, real-world problems to motivate students to identify and research the concepts and principles they need to know to solve these problems.…