Activitymania

I am very familiar with the idea of activitymania. I can remember growing up doing multiple experiments to find one solid answer. I think that the hands-on aspect of the experiments was great. As page 15 states, "when students have opportunities to use their experiences and observations as the basis for science learning, science becomes relevant, stimulating, integrated, and accessible to everyone". However, the time put in was too short to fully learn a concept. This article really hit home to me because as a student, these experiments felt dull. I wasn't able to connect it to anything in the real world; I couldn't understand how it related to me.


I thought that the chart given on page 17 was very telling of how activitymania would look like in a classroom. It is obvious that activitymania should shift towards inquiry. Still though, I believe that it is a step-up from a teacher-directed, textbook-centered classroom. As Table 1 shows, activitymania has one right answer for the students to solve. With inquiry, students can develop the question, the teacher does not know the answer and multiple answers are accepted. I think this would motivate students in their science procedures.


Overall, this impacts me as a teacher. Inquiry learning would take much more time as shown in Table 1, but I think that the results are worth it. I think it would impact my students by feeling that their experiements have worth. They actually mean something to them.  Giving students control may be risky, but I think students could surprise teachers in their abilities. The shift from textbook to activitymania was good, but now inquiry learning should be the next step for science classrooms.