Problem Solving with Individuals and Social media week

Well, another week has come and gone.  Time does seem to fly by faster these days.  This week is another exciting one for all of us in UST311 because it is social media week!  Wooo!  I’m doing more tweeting on a regular basis than I usually do, so hooray for that.  Hopefully everyone will enjoy the remaining couple of days.

                The lesson this week was taught by Sebastian and Brad.  I thought you guys did a great job making sure that the directions were clear and that the class knew what was expected of them.  I also liked the fact that you took turns when explaining the activities so that you each explained one.  It showed me that you both were interested, but not stepping on each other’s toes.  Although, that could have been an entertaining and inventive way of visually demonstrating how students could implement problem solving.  Just a wild thought.  Seriously though you guys did a very good job.

                One thing that really stuck out to me in the chapter this week was the strategies for problem solving section.  To be more specific the goal setting section is what caught my attention because it reminded me of our SMART goals.  Like SMART goals the book states that goals should be attainable, clear and explicit (in other words specific), and that they need to be measurable.  There were a few things that the book says about goals that are either not specified when I’ve talked about SMART goals in the past or that were just plain never said.  The first thing was that goals should be relevant to the person.  I feel like this was not clearly stated when I’ve done SMART goal setting in the past, because it is assumed that the goals you are making mean something to you. 

Something that the book brought up that I had never heard of before was that goals should be stated positively.  I think this is a very import thing to keep your moral up when you are working towards a long term or especially challenging goal.  The first activity that Brad and Sebastian did during their lesson had to do with stating goals positively and I think that was a very good choice.

Well I think that’s all for today so I’ll end with a quote from the goal setting part of our chapter.  “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never know if you’ve arrived!”