Activitymania

   Activitymania is an approach to teaching through hands on activities.  These activities can even be  disconnected from one another.  In this approach students learn through procedures by following the steps right in front of them and matching their personal findings with the expected findings from the teacher.  The students are also working off of the teachers questions and not asking their own questions or investigating what they would like about the certain topic.  This approach only involves one right answer and based on product oriented and students can not question their actions or answers because they are only doing what they were told to do by the procedures.  I think activitymania is less critical thinking because the students are not able to investigate their results and go further with the activity because they are only trying to get the same results as the teacher.  This approach also does not allow much conceptually understanding because it is very technical following procedures and developing low order cognitive skills.  I think that this approach is good for students to get the hands on experience but to get the conceptual understanding I think inquiry would be the best option.
    Inquiry on the other hand, is flexible and the results are unknown to everyone including the teacher which allows more critical thinking and experimentation.  Students can expand on their own thoughts and results while asking their own questions and developing several possible solutions.  This approach really challenges intellectual thinking and looks for equilibration in the students.  Shifting from activitymania to inquiry is asking teacher to "clearly define conceptual goals and the relationships to students lives and interests prior to selecting classroom activities."  This shift will help the students and the teachers by understanding the concepts better through asking questions, investigating and through experiments.  The best approach in my own opinion would be to combine the two but lead with inquiry learning then add hands one activities to supplement the learning process of the students so they understand the material and not just memorize the material.  The most important item is to let the students actually take something way from the activities and understand the material if they are not they are just following steps which does not assist their learning.  I think inquiry is best for students to understand science and gain knowledge about the concepts.
   This impacts me as a teacher because it provides two approaches with details about each approach.  If I were to use this in the classroom which I probably would I would probably combine the two starting with inquiry learning then using hands on activities to aid the students understanding of the concepts.  I remember when I was in elementary school and all we did was follow the steps and get the answer of what the teacher wanted us to get.  I think if my teacher used this inquiry I would have remembered the labs more and learned more.  I really enjoyed this reading because it provided me with a lot of very quality information.