Activity 12.1
QR codes for augmented reality can be used in variety of ways and can suit many different courses and topics. For example, students can make poster of their project and put QR codes to explain more because poster does not provide enough space to include all details. Other students or staff can scan QR code and watch their video. This brings variety to teaching plan because students like to play with gadgets these days. It can be used even with concept maps where students can make concepts maps and put QR code on every node that will link to some video sharing website where video or documents are available to explain further. Such concepts maps can be printed to put on school bulletin boards. Students can access the contents that they need help in. I think one important topic is lab safety. I assign project of lab safety to my grade 10 every year. This year I can ask them to make poster and record a video to explain one aspect of lab safety. We host lot of videos on our local school server. Students can upload their video to school server and link their video to poster by putting a QR code on their poster. QR triggers all around a science laboratory can quickly help students learn the different safety procedures and protocols for the lab equipment. Now all students have smart phone with QR scanner. They can watch other’s videos and learn more in detail about all aspects of lab safety. I am sure students will enjoy it. Dalgarno and Lee argue that five affordances or benefits are spatial knowledge representation, experiential learning, engagement, contextual learning and collaborative learning. Moreover, viewer or user of contents can also check their understanding through interaction with AR contents. Moreover, video contents or other contents, to where QR code leads to, can also allow viewers to comment on. This will provide feedback to people who created contents. This feedback can allow interaction and dialogue between two unrelated persons. This also increases scope of created contents because in offline face-to-face settings, students create lot of contents just to earn marks and target audience of contents is teacher only. It is not fair that students’ efforts in creating work are wasted to earn marks only. Greater audience can boost their self-efficacy level and can also encourage students to put more effort to create quality contents. “The key message is that designing for learning must explicitly incorporate pedagogical
considerations into their specification of a technology-enhanced learning experience.”( Fowler, 2015).)

Learning Objectives:
1. identify the safety and protective equipment available in the laboratory and describe how and when to use each piece of equipment
2. indicate on a school map the location of the nearest fire alarm and appropriate fire exits
3. list sources of first-aid assistance other than the classroom teacher
4. describe common chemistry laboratory hazards and the appropriate procedure or technique for dealing with each
5. produce a list of general rules of safe laboratory conduct
How augmented reality would be used to support learning?
Students can make five groups. Each group will make a poster and record a video about one learning objective. It can make learning activities very engaging students in variety of ways. Poster encourages students to involve themselves in complex mental operations and encourages thinking at the analysis and evolution level of bloom taxonomy. Students will have to collect information, decipher, categorize, which will help student look for patterns and develop inductive reasoning skills. Moreover, it provides students experience of identifying critical relationships for grouping data and thus they learn to make sense of information. Students develop poster as a group work and record video to provide contents in details. Group work will teach them collaborative skills and make learning academic and social. Furthermore, it encourages student to accept and extend ideas of others. They will put QR trigger on their poster to provide more information to other students. Other students can not only watch videos but can also provide feedback. Moreover, this can also become useful for other classes at the same time because these posters can be put on school bulletin board for greater audience. I think videos can greatly improve quality of contents. For example, typically students would make a school map and show location of nearest fire alarm and appropriate exits but if they link it to video then they can be more precise and may be walk to their and may use animation to show that route. Students may also interview other people like doctor or can connect to some YouTube video where such things are explained in greater detail. It will significantly improve quality of contents as students will connect to right source of information. Students may not understand certain aspects of lab safety very well, which will be reflected in their videos. But if they link their poster to video of an expert of lab safety then it can greatly improve students’ understanding of general safety rules in lab. One group may make a list of general safety rules in lab and can put QR code right next to each rule. The QR trigger could lead to a video or documents that can explain the rule and its applications in greater detail. Students are quite tech-savvy these days. They learn word processing and image and video manipulation skills in their school. They love to record videos.

Activity 12.2
I often use QR code in class for diagnostic assessment. Students scan QR codes that lead them to an online short quiz. On completion of the quiz, they receive email that shows them their responses and correct responses. Thus it helps students identify their shortcomings and guides them to improvements. I developed a QR trigger based assessment system, (http://usman.jksz.com:8088/makeQuestion.php) . I developed it as an effective learning-for-assessment tool to provide real time feedback to students. Teacher can use the system to assign a topic and students create questions about the topic as they read and research on that topic. Teacher side of system randomly picks questions from student-submitted question bank and allows students to write diagnostic quiz online. In this way, students are stake holder of assessment-for-learning and it also guides me to adjust my teaching practices. I have been using it for about two years now. Over this period, I have improved it a lot. First problem was some students didn’t submit right questions so I added a function to review/edit/delete student questions. Later, as the question bank grew bigger, some students started submitting same questions which were already present in the system so I had to improve logic of system to verify it against previously stored question. Moreover, interface was improved a lot to match different kind of devices that are present in students’ hand these days. Students seem to enjoy this interaction as they are quizzed mostly based on question created by them or other students from previous years. It also keeps them active in class because they know that they will be quizzed at the end of every lesson. Assessment drives learning. Moreover, it does not add lot of workload for me because I don’t have to mark hundreds of student scripts every week.

Reference
Fowler, C. (2015). Virtual reality and learning: Where is the pedagogy?. British Journal Of Educational Technology, 46(2), 412-422. doi:10.1111/bjet.12135
Dalgarno, B. & Lee, M. (2010). What are the learning affordances of 3-D virtual environments? BritishJournal of Educational Technology, 41 , 10–32.

Technology finds its way to school classrooms consciously or subconsciously. Some teachers are making conscious decisions to use technology in classroom to make their teaching more affective by applying different kinds of learning theories. Moreover, education administrators are also pushing for more technology in classroom. So sometime teachers may not be fully aware of potential of technology in classroom but they use it because it is expected of them. So increasingly more teachers are using technology because “ease of use’ equates with high invitational appeal” (Adam)

Proper use of technology can greatly enhance learning experience of students. For instance, sometime it is not possible to conduct experiments in lab due to unavailability of chemicals then simulation with guided exploration sheets can emulate the lab experience. Moreover, sometime students are expected to visualize tiny particles but it is impossible to visualize them due to their size then simulations and animations can fill in that gap of hand on experience. “Our tools or techne extend our reach, abilities, sensory perception, locomotion, and understanding”. (Adam). Moreover, all objects invite us to extend or change our relationship to our world. These enhancements or transformations can be minor to profound (Adam). So students find it very easy to understand contents with the help of simulations. Similarly, online editable mind maps can be used right from the start of a new course and students can continuously build, fine-tune and add new nodes to them as they learn more things.

Moreover, technology acts as a tool for constructivist and connectivist theory of learning because it links to information network, which is not limited to one library only. Anytime students open internet browser, then source of information is unlimited for them. Students can collect information from variety of resources and analyze, verify with their previous knowledge and reasoning, and reconstruct their thoughts. All this leads to exponential growth of knowledge. Moreover, it develops international mindedness because students get information from difference sources and thus they get to appreciate entity that generated that knowledge. However, a teacher should always use technology consciously and should not fall into trap of technology unknowingly. “An unassisted novice, a new teacher, or a busy lecturer may be more inclined to accept as given the PowerPoint defaults in forming their presentations, and subsequently the ideas about how they will present their material.” (Adam)

When I was reading Adam’s article on technology determinism, I was thinking about how often I have been conscious about use of technology and how often I have checked it against pedagogical theory. Unfortunately, there were not many instances. Most of time, technology provided its defaults and I used it according to provided format. So it is the software developer who controls pedagogical theory, whenever a piece of technology is being used in class. A teacher’s choice is mostly limited to technology tool but once a teacher decides to use a tool then mostly it is developer of the software who controls pedagogical theory. Moreover technology influences “him or her to organize and present knowledge in a certain way.”(Adam) “This particular way is evoked primarily through ease of access to default patterns or templates.” (Adam) For example, a teacher may decide to use online assessment system for efficient marking. Once he had made his choice then options are limited by the assessment system. If the assessment system does not allow graphics, or system lacks math formula builder or limits choice or limits device, or limits types of questions, then teacher has to live with the restrictions. We know that higher order thinking cannot be accessed with simple MCQ type of questions. Thus teacher has been “constrained by particular design decisions embedded in this software (Adam)

Adam raised another important point that teachers slip “into the easiest, most accessible, efficient path and seldom thinking to diverge from it.” (Adam) Although Adam wrote mainly about PowerPoint, his points are valid with other forms of technology as well. He believes that technology “exerts a kind of soft determinism upon a sleepy teacher-user, by turns inviting him or her to try certain ways of preparing a lesson or lecture. (Adam) He does provide a solution to this by saying that “The inevitable tendency of any given technology to enact its ‘vortex of side-effects’ is counterbalanced by each user’s willing-ness to pay attention, to remain focused on the purposeful task at hand—in this case, teaching.” (Adam) If a teacher consciously decide technological tool according to pedagogical theories of learning then technology will not determine his teaching style. Adam also raised question about habits of mind and styles of teaching and forms of thinking that technology determines. Teachers have lot of workload so they easily fall victim of unconscious use of technology. Van Manen (1997: 21) proves by saying that “cool water invites us to drink, the sandy beach invites the child to play, an easy chair invites our tired body to sink in it.” Teacher need time to find workaround to do away with software templates and to make sure that they use software according to pedagogical theory. Technology solutions ‘elevates format over content’ (Tufte 2003a), which puts pedagogical theory behind. Another important thing is limitations of online assessment system in terms of providing formative feedback. These systems can mechanically check if inputted answer is correct or not but they fail to provide feedback that leads to improvement. So they hamper dialogue between students and teachers.
It is very important that teachers are well trained about technology in education so they make conscious decisions to use right form of technology for different tasks in class because “good ICT could worsen teaching when it is placed in the hands of the untrained” (Young 2004). Teachers are going to use technology in classroom anyway. If they are not well trained then it is going to “negatively affect [their] habits of mind” (Turkle 2004)

Reference
Adams, C. (2006) PowerPoint, habits of mind, and classroom culture. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 38(4), 389–411.

Tufte, E. R. (2003a) PowerPoint is evil: power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely, 11(09), September. Available online at: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html, accessed 1 December 2016.

Turkle, S. (2004) The fellowship of the microchip: global technologies as evocative objects. In M. M. Suárez-Orozco and D. B. Qin-Hilliard (eds),Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), 97–113.

Van Manen, M. (1997) Researching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive
Pedagogy, nd edn (London, ON: Althouse Press).

Young, J. R. (2004) When good technology means bad teaching. Chronicle of Higher Education,
51(12), A31. Available online at: http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i12/12a03101.htm, accessed 1 December 2016

Please go to Concentration Activity page.

I have chosen Vanilla Forum as a media tool. It is a light-weight tool to run forum on your website. It can also be embeded in existing school website seamlessly. I have been using for about 4 months now for my ICT class.
Complete evaluation of Vanilla Forum as a teaching tool is available here.

Here are some questions for discussion

What kind of learning activities can be done using forum?

Have you used forum website for teaching and if so then which forum did you use?

What could discourage teachers from using web-based technology for teaching?

Do you have any tips for educational use of forums?

Thanks,
Usman

I think following four technologies could be very useful in
education

Stream video to the
browser

Students don’t have to download
videos of tutorials to watch them. Sometime there is also issue of compatibility
of video player software for example, files with mov  extensions don’t play
on windows platform due to lack of codecs for them. One has to install QuickTime
player to play those videos.  There are many different codecs. End user of
those resources may not have proper video codecs installed on their systems so Stream video to the browser (a server-side
technology) can play videos without worrying about compatibility of end user’s
system.

Drag and drop and
XHR upload

I use Submit
Assignment to collect assignments from students. I think drag and drop kind
of upload is much better. I would like to use this one to get assignments from
students. It is a great technology to build user-friendly interface.  Whenever
I get time I will implement it on my page.

Browser
based file reading is great to allow students to read documents online.
Then we don’t have to worry about compatibility of students’ system to the file
type.  Moreover, there is also issue of cross-system compatibility. For
example, windows user may find it difficult to read document developed by mac
word processor or mac Number applications.

Matching
type of questions in science can be made by exploiting drag and drop technology.

Objectives of lesson:

1. Students will learn what constitutes plagiarism
2. Students will learn about best practices to avoid plagiarism

Student will work in small groups of 4.

Activity-1: What do they already know? Time: 5 minutes

Each group will be given an A4 paper like this

They will be asked to work in their group and write four things about plagiarism on the given A4 paper.

Activity-2: Pre-quiz plagiarism Time: 5 minutes

Students will be guided to following link to take pre-quiz about plagiarism. Each student will take quiz individually.  http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/plag/pretest.php

Activity-3: Learn and Connect Time: 15 minutes

Students will learn new aspects of plagiarism and will connect with their previous knowledge. They will be directed to following link to learn about plagiarism. Moreover, they will discuss in groups as they explore more information about plagiarism.

http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism-101/what-is-plagiarism

https://www.indiana.edu/~tedfrick/plagiarism/index2.html

http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/plag/whatisplag.php

Activity-4: Reflect on learning, Time: 5 minutes

Students will be encouraged to discuss how their position has changed after reading. Then they will write new notes and fine-tune their previous notes on their group paper about plagiarism.

Activity-5: Assessment for learning, Time: 10 minutes

Students will take quiz at

http://slis.wayne.edu/students/policies/plagiarism-quiz.php

to check their understanding of plagiarims.

Activity-6: Best practices, Time:   15 minutes

Student in their groups study best practices to avoid plagiarism at

https://www.indiana.edu/~istd/examples.html

Activity-7: Identify Plagiarized work, Time:  10 minutes

Students in their groups go to following link

http://www.grammar-quizzes.com/writing_plagiarism_eg.html

to identify plagiarized work

Activity-8: Make concept map, Time:  10 minutes

Then all groups in the class will make a concept map on a big poster to show different aspects of plagiarism.

7.2

Go to following link (http://www.contextures.com/xlSampleData01.html

)to get sample excel data. Copy the data to your workbook and apply different functions that you learn in the following RSS feeds.

CP056: So which formulas you should care to learn?

Find first & last date of a sale using Pivot tables [quick tip]

How many formulas should you learn? [Weekend Poll]

Finding if a cell has 7 in it… [Pattern matching in Excel]

Submit four excel workbooks to me at

http://usman.jksz.com:8088/assignmentSubmit.php
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Flickr is blocked in China so I could not search for images to create slideshow. I had to call somebody out of China and gave him directions to send me Flickr code to embed in my wordpress post.

If flickr is not blocked in China I will use to share images with students and then ask them to comment on structure and functions of organelles of cells that were shown in those images

—————————— Flickr coded is here——————

Web can improve learning experience of students in variety of ways. For example, it connects students to real world. In brick and mortar classroom, students excess to knowledge is only limited to text books and library but now, with the help of web resources, students can connect to expert of respective fields. They don’t have to depend on resources provided by teachers. They can collect information very efficiently at Wikipedia using search engines, right information in short time rather than going to library and looking for information. Cost in terms of time and effort of finding right information is reduced significantly. This explains the exponential growth of knowledge. They can be a node on information network and benefit according to their learning potential. Teacher’s role is merely reduced to a guide, who shares learning outcomes with students. Students can connect to information network and learn a lot.  Another google example here is issue of hard water, my students in shanghai had no idea about problems that people face in some part of world due to hard water. They did some research online and found lot of problems in countryside China. So they raised money to help people of effective areas.

It has also made communication lot easier. Previously students’ communication was only within school communities but now with the help of web tools they can socialize with students beyond political borders. They can also benefit students of other places by being node on information network. Moreover, students of similar interest groups can make clubs across the globe and coordinate their efforts to benefit those who are lagging behind. Sometime results of search queries on search engines bring questions to them which they answer. Moreover, they can also ask questions and see how different people answer their question from different aspects. All this create lot of knowledge on the information network.

It is even more important for science courses because it is not possible to do many complex science experiments at high school giving the unavailability of resources, lack of funds, government controls on certain dangerous chemicals. Animations, simulation are very helpful to compensate the inability to do experiments in school. Students can have hand on experience without touching the real chemicals. Interaction with simulations helps student learn properties of chemicals. Similarly, when students study physiology of the human body, it is not possible at high school level to bring a human dead body to provide them hand on experience , Therefore videos, surgery simulations are greatly helpful to fill in that gap. It is not possible for a teacher to be good at making animations or videos. So online resources provides all those animations which help students understand complex scientific phenomenon.

Sometime students cannot attend class because they are sick, or they had to be away for some reason. Sometime a student is just not performing best of his work due to some social issues. Teachers can put their resources online. Students can access those resources from their homes to make up for their loss. Strong students can use the resources to preview the upcoming lessons and activities. Weak students can use those resources to review. They can also be used to review before major tests and quizzes. Teachers can also share keys of assessment online for students. Moreover, online assessments are way more efficient and provide real time response to students, whereas teacher may take many days to provide feedback to students. By the time teacher provide feedback to students, students’ priorities have already changed to other tasks.

I worry about risks to students in their online experience. It is very important that students are safe online. Offline is bit easier to manage due to controlled environment in schools but access to internet takes them beyond school walls.  One extreme could be to block access to internet at all or discourage it by limiting bandwidth. This hinders students’ progress by disconnecting them from rest of the world. Moreover, curiosity will drive them crazy and whenever they go back to their homes, they will access internet and explore all sort of things that they have not been taught to deal with in school. Most of schools have already realized that blocking and banning is not working. Allowing unrestricted access to internet is also not a solution to this problem. So all countries have some website blocked because they believe that contents of the websites are not in line with the social values of the country and they don’t want to corrupt minds of their citizen by exposing them to “wrong contents”.  I argue that two-pronged policy can be used to handle this situation. One is web monitoring systems to manage blacklist that will ensure safe dealing with cyber world. However, best one is to convince students to have safe conduct online by educating them about responsible conduct online. In case of China, there are focused efforts to educate students about responsible conduct online. Moreover, local governments often run campaigns on electronic and print media to educate people about internet safety.  In addition, it is part of our school policy to reiterate this often in variety of ways. It is taught in planning-10 course. Moreover, there are clubs in school to highlight this issue. It is also part of ICT 11 and 12 courses.  It is also part of our teacher advisory groups (TAG) meetings with students.  Generally speaking, students are submissive to school authorities in oriental cultures and they heed to authority’s advice. So we have not experienced many problems about cyber safety.

Government’s strict control on internet also ensure safe online environment for students. All websites, that have registered their domain names in China, go through strict web surveillance to ensure good quality of contents. Moreover, each political jurisdiction has its own layer of regulations to keep eye on contents on internet. People, in general, are open to try new technologies to improve standards of living. Moreover, Chinese parents are also very supportive of internet use for the education. So they never complained about this.

Week 5, Part-A

Learning Objective: Inorganic Nomenclature

Students should be able to write names of ionic and molecular substances.

I taught inorganic nomenclature to my grade 11 chemistry class last week. Generally speaking, it is quite a boring topic because students have to remember many rules and have to do many worksheets to practice naming of ionic and molecular substances.  But this time, before teaching this topic, I took some time to introduce idea of mind maps to them. Moreover, I introduced some websites like bubbl.us to make mind maps and how to share with them. First I direct students Wikipedia to learn about IUPAC nomenclature’s history. Later, I assigned them task to make mind map and add more nodes to the mind map as we explore deeper into the nomenclature in three days. A rubric was given to them. It took three days to complete this topic. Every day, they added many new nodes and expanded their mind map.  They also shared it on the school blog to have it peer reviewed. They enjoyed learning the topic and did very well on summative assessment of the topic. Here are links to their mind maps.

https://bubbl.us/?s=533794#MzY2OTQ1Mi81MzM3OTQvMDk2ZTE4MDEwM2UyNjM4ZmFiODg0OGY0MWUyNjY5ODA=!X

https://bubbl.us/?s=7299064#MzY3MzE0Ny83Mjk5MDY0LzdmZGRmYmM5ZTk5NmU0ZTY2MjRiN2YxZjNkMTIyMWFk?X

https://bubbl.us/?s=533659#MzY3MzUxMC81MzM2NTkvYmUxODg5OTYyZjk4YTI3Yjk4ZDk3ZWNlZjI2ZWI4YTI=!X

https://bubbl.us/?s=533656#MzY3NjM1My81MzM2NTYvNWQxNTA4MmEzYzIwNDhkNzA1MGNiZWZmZGY4MmMwNGI=!X

https://bubbl.us/v3/index.php?s=7300601#MzY3Mzk2NC83MzAwNjAxL2ZjNTFiOGUwYjQxMjdhMTE3N2FmYjk3MzAyNGFiYTVi?X

The above activity reaches the level of redefinition according to SAMR model. This task is inconceivable without use of technology. I understand that students can make mind maps on paper but they cannot reedit without starting from scratch.  Buubl.us provides mechanism to move nodes to new places. It provides opportunities to build on with newly learned knowledge. Moreover, it engages students into rich learning experience  Not only does it enhance their learning experience but it also targets higher thinking order by providing chances of critical thinking by redesigning their concept map , collaboration with peers and communication on the school blog. Therefore, it goes along with revised bloom taxonomy’s standards as it provides means to apply, evaluate and synthesis.

One drawback that I found with bubbl.us is that it does not provide a way to share with public and thus student work is not searchable. So my students had to make screenshot to put it on their blog for peer review.

If I analyze the teaching design using SECTIONS model then I believe it students enjoyed leaning the inorganic nomenclature in groups. As to the ease of use, student found it hard to understand how bubbl.us works in the beginning but that as not shock for me. So I spent sometime in the beginning to introduce the mind map website even before I introduced them inorganic nomenclature topic.  There was not any cost associated with this design because bubbl.us gives three free mind maps with free signup. Moreover, communication part took place on an open source vanilla forums web application which is installed on our local school server. Mind maps are great tools to build connections between fragments of information. They are very natural because that’s what our neurons are doing in brain to learn. It was a group work so student collaborated with their peers to improve and build their mind maps. As to the organizational issues of this activity, I believe a well thought-out and planned lesson has greater chances to succeed.  I didn’t find any organizational issue with this lesson. It is quite easy technology to use. Students went to Wikipedia to learn about IUPAC nomenclature’s history. That helped them network with the experts in this field. All student signup data of Bubbl.us is saved on US servers, which means that privacy is decided by patriot act. Bubbl.us TOS claims to keep student data safe. Moreover, students in China, usually, do not provide correct info to web services.  Vanilla forums are hosted on our local school server, which ensures that students’ data is safe.

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Week 5, Part-B

Learning Objective: Properties of elements of periodic table

Students should be able to draw conclusions about the similarities and trends in the properties of elements, with reference to the periodic table.

Prior knowledge: Students had already learned about properties.  Moreover, they have learned video editing in film and media course.

I am planning to teach properties of elements to my grade 11 chemistry class in few weeks now. First I will introduce learning objectives to students and explain the key terminology.

Activity 1: Then I will split the class into small groups of two students each and will give them task to go to http://ed.ted.com/periodic-videos to learn about properties of elements. Watch elements’ video and pick any five elements which have similar four properties.

Activity 2:  Make a five minute video using youtube and other online resources to explain those properties. Their video should

1. Define each property
2. Show some experimental demo of each property
3. Should compare each property with some other element’s property.

In addition, following http://www.olejarz.com/arted/digitalvideo/interviewrubric.pdf rubric will be used.

Activity 3: Upload the video on some video sharing website and put the link on school’s blogging system.

Activity 4: Watch other’s videos and comment on following aspets

1. Three things learned
2. Two things that you found interesting
3. One question you still have.

I plan to use SAMR model to teach the properties of elements. This learning activity redefines the learning design. Activity-1 connects to experts of respective fields because all videos of elements are made by Ted experts. Students learn from right source and learn how those properties of elements are demonstrated in those video. At the same time, they communicate and collaborate with one another and back in their mind they are working on Venn diagram as they are expected to find few elements with four similar properties. It is expected that they will watch quite a few videos before they can find out right group of elements with similar properties. At the same time they will be discussing with one another, which help them reconstruct their thoughts. All this is going to enhance their learning experience about elements’ properties. Moreover it targets higher thinking order as it provides opportunities of critical thinking, collaboration and communication.

Later students will collect their information about the shortlisted elements. They will talk to each other to present it in a logical order according to the given rubric.  They will search online and find videos that demonstrate those properties and then put them together. Finally, they will embed link of their video on the school blog to have their videos peer-reviewed. This learning design has completely redefined the learning process to target higher thinking order of students.