Mario Gamboa

I plan to divide PBL units into manageable chunks and provide the instructions for completion of each chunk in a variety of ways.  I also plan to have students provide me with a journal/chronical on a daily basis where they let me know what they have done, what they have questions about and what they still need to do so that they are completing assignments deliberately.  I also plan to study some tutorials available from our tech department on using flipgrid, seesaw, EdPuzzle and screencastify in order to provide instructions in a variety of ways as well as to introduce… >>>

Critical thinking, collaboration and cooperation, and problem based learning can all be combined using a real-world scenario to create a great learning experience.  It requires clever guidance, encouragement and adaptation.  This means doing a lot of preparatory work.  But the desired outcome makes all the work by the teacher and students worthwhile.  Students learn all the skills they need for a career, college or military future.  My goal will be to tweak the way I've been doing my PBLs with the ideas provided in this course.

There are many suggestions for tools that are useful for Reading, Reflective writing, Displaying, and Doing that I plan to incorporate for PBLs in my classes next school year.  I also plan to include more rubrics in periodic surveys of weekly progress toward completion of those PBLs.  Those things will help to enhance what I already am doing.

This segment of the course provided me with several important suggestions and I plan to implement them immediately.  They include providing students with an explanation of the expectations and demands of online courses, explanations of technology requirements, explanations of communication methods and requirements, and explanations of how to think critically.  Although they may seem self-explanatory, they really aren't and need to be explained.  That is now my plan and I will start working on it right away.

I have been using active learning strategies for the past several years.  I plan to continue to use PBL projects, but plan to incorporate more student self-assessments, student self-reflection, and peer-peer (within groups) assessments and reflections.  Those are components of active learning that I believer will enhance what I have been doing.

I plan to continue to use PBL projects to have students master the TEKS for the courses I teach, but plan to include more self-assessment activities, more reflection activities, peers in group asessments and reflections.  Up to now, my classes have been F2F, but due to covid19, the second half of this school year was online.  Preparations for next year will include both and blended formats.

I will adapt the spaghetti muscles to illustrate sarcomere function in A&P, adapt pizza gases or ABG go fish to diagnostic bacteriology in Med Micro, :ulse point macarena in A&P,  The techniques are very engaging for kinesthetic learners.

I think I can use T-shirts, shower caps and adapt sheets with chalk on sidewalks to teach anatomy.  Chalk on sidewalks also can be used to describe pathogenesis in Medical Microbiology and Pathophysiology.  I also think that stories may be useful for classification of pathogens in Medical Micro and Pathophysiology and for teaching anatomical structures.

I teach three non-IBC courses, but I want to be able to support the IBC courses.  I can see how it may be possible for me to apply some of these strategies to teach Pathophysiology, Medical Microbiology and Anatomy and Physiology by adapting the strategies to monitor progress (progress bingo instead of patient bingo) and event cards (scenarios) to make sure my students are always thinking in real-world contexts that will help them to pass the certification tests.

I use problem based learning projects to have my students teach each other various topics based on state standards.  However, I sometimes find it difficult to assess (before their presentations are made) whether they are understanding the topics they are preparing to teach.  The methods described here provide excellent engaging and interesting ways to assess whether they are learning or if they are carrying misconceptions with them to their final product.  Consequently, my plan is to use these strategies as formative assessments to help guide them to the successful completion of their projects.  (I teach Pathophysiology, Medical Microbiology and Anatomy… >>>