Thursday, November 17, 2005

Opinion Paper

I recently had my astronomy students do some research into the Moon landings. I was hoping that some of them would argue that the landings never occured. When I asked them why they thought the Moon landings did occur they responded with "we ahve been told that they happened". I wonder if we are trying to get students to formulate their own understanding of the world, how to we begin to get them to question what they "have always known to be true"?

I would like the students to form their own understanding and not answer with statements about being told about it. I think that students who form their own explantions can defend and actually learn the information better than students who are told the information.

1 comment:

Karl Fisch said...

Maybe present them with other "truths" that people once accepted that turned out to be false; whether they be because we just didn't know, or because somebody purposely lied about them.