Inspiring Educational Curiousity

For a group presentation in class,my group was assigned to do a presentation on drill and practice software. From the name you could tell that this type of software helps reinforce concepts that have been thought already by presenting a lot of same type situations for the individual to solve so that by doing it over and over they will get better. I decided to download a drill and practice software to learn a little more about it and came upon FRS Fraction Master.

The software came as a trial version but I was still able to do a great deal of reviewing it. Addition practice and simple recognition was two of the trial options.Addition practice present about 10 fraction addition problems for users to go through and at the end it would tell you how much you got wrong and lets you move onto the other round once you got enough accurately answered.Simple recognition gave you 10 problems as well where the user had to recognize different fraction parts of a whole.   It was pretty straight forward but users must also be alert in language competence as some of the wording used to recognize certain fraction parts are tricky.

I found this to be a great software to reinforce a lesson in fractions once it has been thought. This software is not without it's flaws though as some of the disadvantages of using drill and practice software is that students or users in general can become pretty bored in doing the same thing over and over. What I think though is that as a teacher you can use drill and practice software but you have to balance it with your student's ability and initiative to work. That is to say that if you know your students will get bored doing drill and practice then you can introduce rewards for who finishes it first or diversify the use of the software with some other instructional aid. Nevertheless I believe that FRS Fraction Master can go a long way in helping with reinforcement of mathematical fraction concepts.

I've had this software on my pc for a while now and it has proved very effective in helping me learn to play my keyboard. This software is great for anyone who wishes to learn to play the piano or keyboard alike.

It doesn't matter if you don't know how to play or read music because the software is made into different chapters where it will teach you different lessons.In chapter one it will start with the basics, teaching someone how long to hold certain notes then gradually increase to teach the individual where notes on the musical scale reside. It even has a automated voice guidance teacher and shows the learner an actual layout of the piano and shows them which keys to press while teaching them to play.

When we were little we used crayons to represent all our imaginations and our own big creative world on paper.Now here comes a game by the developers of Kloonigames that uses the principles of our imaginative tools to help adults and also children learn some of the basic concepts of Physics,so while the game may look somewhat childish it is in no way to be written off as just another child game sensation but rather a creative learning and problem solving adventure.The game looks as though it was designed by a bunch of 6 year old geniuses,as the design is very creative and simple yet still helping you grasp the concepts of it.



The game consist of about 70 levels and the main concept of the game is for you to manipulate a little ball to help it get to a yellow star in every stage.To do this you must use a crayon which can give the ball a push to get to the star.Other functions of the crayon include that you can draw a rope to move objects,draw bridges and just about what ever imaginative object you can think of in order to get the ball to the star.

What I thought was very insightful about this was that it not only enhanced the ability of an individual's critical thinking skills but even though it was a single player game,it was amazing to see how different an individual's problem solving skills developed and worked.An instance was when I was practically stuck on a stage then a relative of mine came by and showed me how he would have gotten the ball to the star which now added to my cognitive ability to understand the lesson of that stage,also this just shows how many ways you can achieve the goal of each stage.

Education is a funny thing
For all the mystery it may bring
Indoctrination some may cry
But I beg of you please tell me why

Great minds think alike they say
So why the mood of such dismay
Sounds ironic I think not
For great ideas are vast a drop

Yes I agree to some extent
Indoctrination’s tacit intent
But what keeps one from conformity
Is the wonderful thing of curiousity