Touch Table

NOTE: I was not able to make it to the first touch table experience due myself having a prior commitment chaperoning my class to Chicago, but I was able to bring in an object on the next class session to share with the class and learn about the touch table experience from that session.

I believe that a student's learning is much more than just from books. The learning process sometimes can take a small side-step to allow the student to share something of themselves. To be able to share something with their classmates and be able to experience new things and objects in a new way can be a valuable resource to the classroom setting. The idea of a touch table links strongly to Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. Every student learns best in different ways. Not only are we just learning linguistically in a classroom setting, but with a touch table we are able to tap into kinesthetic, inter and intrapersonal, special intelligence and more. It again brings the learning process to a level beyond texts. With a touch table, it gives the students a way to take things that they may see everyday and give new meaning to it; To understand common items in a whole new way. This also serves as a way to bring the outside, in, when the conditions for a true field trip may not be right. Students today, especially in the urban/suburban areas are exposed to less and less nature, thinking that food comes from the grocery store and their clothes come from the department store. A bigger perspective must be gained, and a touch table experience within the classroom gives a teacher the opportunity to bring this perspective one step closer to the student. If a student can now touch, feel, think, and experience a small bit of nature within the classroom, new understandings are formed, creating and edging towards a larger outlook on how nature and the environment truly works.

In choosing my object to share with the class, I wanted to bring in something that would make people think. I had in my classroom a demonstration kit about plastic recycling called "Hands on Plastics" In this kit, it shows how all the different plastics, by code, are recycled, and what many of the uses for these plastics may be. Not everyone gets to see this step of the process. People who recycle may just see the actual plastic items as they put them into the recycling bin, and possibly see the final products after manufacturing, but it is this intermediate step that I found to be something of interest. This, I believe made a very good touch table item, as it sparked questions, made people think about where these items came from, and maybe, after seeing and experiecing it, may look at recycling a little differently.