Blog Post     Due December 02^nd

According to Hewitt, arbitrary is something that you need to memorize. Arbitrary is if someone could only come to know it to be true by being informed by others (Hewitt, 1999). My understanding is that we can assign anything a name arbitrarily and when everyone accepts the name, it becomes a convention and the name becomes the representation of that particular thing.  On the other hand, necessary is dependent upon the awareness of students. Necessary are the things or facts that students have to figure out themselves through their working process.  For me to teach effectively, I think it is important to impart all the arbitrary knowledge to my students but at the same time, I also need to think carefully how to cultivate a learning habit where students can develop their awareness to discover all the necessaries during problem solving process.  I guess the essence of promote “necessary” awareness is to give only required “arbitrary” and encourage students to work on themselves to find out the necessary.  Once they find the necessary, it becomes the new arbitrary.  Following this process, we would see that some of the “arbitrary” were “necessary” at the beginning of their learning process.  I like the idea that a teacher should “provide a task which will make properties accessible through awareness”.  In my opinion, this part can be done by giving more group work or project-based learning experience.  The lecture time will be the time teachers give arbitrary information and the group work or project-based learning is where the awareness of necessary takes place.