Dr. Roberts
I thought Dr. Roberts presentation was fascinating. The idea that kids spend increasing amounts of time with media is not earth shattering, but to see studies with statistics and charts really highlights the issue. My reaction to the presentation was varied. I think the natural reaction is to recognize that technology is becoming ever more present in the lives of teenagers and we, as teachers, need to figure out ways to use it in the classroom to keep them engaged. However, I also found myself having doubts about the idea of using more technology in the classroom. If students are spending SO MUCH time with technology, maybe school needs to be a break from it. The newsweek article talked about the negative impacts that overuse of technology can have on the brain. According to Dr. Roberts, our students are exposed to about 16 hours of media every day. It might be our responsibility to force them to step away from it while they are at school. I don't think we should reject technology altogether, clearly we need to teach tech skills. But maybe we don't need to rush to figure out how to allow even more technology use in the classroom when students are being inundated every other waking hour of the day.
Online Classes
I think the increase in online classes is bad for education in general. However, I think online learning can be an excellent resource is used in a specific and limited way.
Generally speaking, school is about a lot more than the content of the textbook. Even bright students who can learn content on their own gain from the socialization aspect of school. In a classroom students learn how to work with others, how to moderate behavior, how to express themselves in a variety of ways, how to meet deadlines, and various other non-content skills. The more online courses students take, the more they lose out on learning these skills.
Furthermore, I do not think that it is a good option for remediation. If a student did not do well in a course and needs to re-take it, I don't think taking the online course would increase the opportunity for student understanding. I have subbed for an online summer school course and observed students doing the minimum requirements to pass the class and move on. It does not appear that the classes encourage higher level thinking or complex understanding of the topic.
However, I think online courses could be a good option for higher level senior classes. High performing seniors can be more self directed and, therefore, more successful with these types of classes. These seniors have already had the socialization aspect of high school. Classes could be designed to be rigorous and encourage higher level thinking for student that don't need a teacher scaffolding and pushing them. In the words of Vygotsky, I think online learning could be a good educational opportunity for students who are able to manage their own zone of proximal development.
Technology Resources for the Teacher
1. http://www.dropbox.com/
Drop box seems like a great resource for students to use when working on a group project that is electronically based. If the project is housed in one place on drop box, then all of the students can access the project from different computers at different times to work on it.
2. http://www.techsmith.com/download/jing/
This allows you to record your self narrate a slidehow or powerpoint presentation. I think it would be cool to have a powerpoint recorded with my narration and then assign that for homework, rather than do the powerpoint in class. By having the students listen to and watch the powerpoint at home, we can use classtime for more hands on activities
3. http://prezi.com
I have seen people use prezi and it is a lot more engaging than powerpoint. I would like to spend time learning how to use it in my classroom.
4. http://docs.google.com/
Last year I had students keep notebooks that they used to do classwork and homework assignment. I think google docs could be used to serve this same purpose, but online instead of a physical version. Students would create a google doc, share it with me, and the continually add to it with each assignment throughout the school year. This would be beneficial because (a) students can't lose their notebooks, (b) students can't forget their notebooks at home, and (c) I don't have to haul a stack of notebooks around when I am grading them Of course, this is only an option is all students have laptops or tablets in the classroom.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Interdisciplinary Teaching - 402: Session 4
History is a subject that lends itself to interdisciplinary
teaching and learning. Utilizing literature, visual arts, music, and various
other subjects come so naturally to teaching history that it almost seems
impossible to avoid using resources from other subjects. One area of United
States History that particularly lends itself to interdisciplinary learning is
the Harlem Renaissance. A time in history when American experienced an
explosion of art, literature, poetry, philosophy, and all other forms of culture
from an African American community that was re-defining itself as it cast off
the previous identity of slave and victim of Jim Crow. To teach the Harlem
Renaissance without including other subjects is not teaching the Harlem
Renaissance at all. However, to make it truly interdisciplinary, I could move
beyond reading a Langston Hughes poem and showing a Palmer Hayden painting in
my own classroom. I could sit and plan with the English and Art teachers to see
if we can’t align our curriculum so that the students are seeing various
aspects of the Harlem Renaissance in three of their classes at the same time.
Given the logistical challenges of organizing the schedule and curriculum multiple teachers, it is much more realistic for me to think about how to pull other disciplines into my class to enhance student understanding of the Harlem Renaissance. As I said above, having the students read a poem such as The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes (link below), incorporates english/literature into a history classroom to enrich student understanding. Additionally, giving students an opportunity to view the painting The Janitor Who Paints by Palmer Hayden (link below), uses visual art to deepen student understanding of the Harlem Renaissance movement. Students could read this poem and look at this painting and interpret the meaning behind each piece of art as it relates to the African American experience in the Harlem Renaissance. Students would be encouraged to think why these artists created these specific pieces of art at this particular time. Students would use what they know about the Harlem Renaissance to gain a deeper understanding of the art, and in turn use the art to gain a deeper understanding of the Harlem Renaissance.
I think it is a powerful tool any time you can use other disciplines to support your own content. Bringing in resources that traditionally belong in other classes gives the students an opportunity to approach your content from various angles and dig into the multiple layers of the subject area. Again, history is a perfect subject to utilize resources from various disciplines and the Harlem Renaissance, in particular, is ripe for such opportunities.
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
The Janitor Who Paints
http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=10126
I commented on Eirik Kingston's blog post - eirik234smc.blogspot.com
I commented on Eirik Kingston's blog post - eirik234smc.blogspot.com
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Mind the Gap - 402: Session Two
1. Quote 1: “I argued that the public schools had not been devised by
scheming capitalists to impose ‘social control’ on an unwilling proletariat or
to reproduce social inequality.” (page 6)
In this quote Ravitch is responding to a group of leftist historians in the 1970s who claim that the public education system is organized to intentionally maintain a socio-economic caste system and oppress the poor. I agree with Ravitch that public education is a system that has the ability to liberate the poor and the disenfranchised. However, it is clear that the education system is not succeeding at these goals. Schools in low-income areas are usually the lowest performing schools, making the quality of education worse in the schools where education can make the biggest difference. I do not believe the system is meant to intentionally keep poor people down, but we have allowed a system to exist that is failing to lift these people up.
Quote 2: “Testing had become a central preoccupation in the schools and was not just a measure but an end in itself.” (page 12) This statement gets to the heart of the problem with high stakes testing in our education system today. Most people would agree that it is important to assess student and teacher performance, but the focus on testing has overwhelmed so many other important aspects of education. We have lost sight of cultivating student learners, especially whole learners, by replacing them with student performers. If we educate our citizens that the end goal is more important than the process, we are eroding a society of critical thinkers.
2. I think Ravitch hits the nail on the head in her description of a well-educated person. To expand on her description, I think a well-educated person who has the ability to think critically about any given problem using both skills and knowledge accumulated throughout life. A well-educated person has the ability to see multiple perspectives and does not accept the status quo without due consideration of all perspectives. A well-educated person is someone who is continually striving to grow their knowledge and understanding.
3. I enjoyed our class discussion of the first two chapters of Ravitch. The part of the discussion that stands out to me was when we talked about teacher assessment. There seemed to be consensus that there needs to be some way to measure teacher performance. However, I think there was also agreement that exclusively using the high stakes testing method is not the best way to assess. Many people in class suggested different methods of assessment, but I was most intrigued by what Matt and Greg shared about the evaluation process at De La Salle. A regular evaluation by a committee made up of people representing different parts of the school seems like a fair and reasonable method. Such a committee could be informed by student evaluations, peer evaluations, principal evaluations, and the teacher's own self evaluation, in addition to test scores. This method allows for various types of information and gives the teacher more substantive feedback for improvement in the future.
4. Gap: CA SS 11.7.2 Explain U.S. and Allied wartime strategy, including the major battles of Midway, Normandy, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Battle of the Bulge.
Resources
website - http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/turning-tide-europe-1942-1944
book - Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War by John Ellis
article - Allied Strategy in World War II: The Churchill Era, 1942-1943 by De Lamar Jensen
EDSITEment is a website hosted by We the People which is a program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The website contains a plethora of lesson plans related to various periods of time in US History for teachers to use in their classroom. One EDSITEment lesson plan focuses specifically on the Allied strategies during World War Two. The lesson plan focuses on the agreement between the Allies to settle Europe by toppling Italy and Germany before they confront Japan. In their advancement on Europe, the Allies first decided to first attack Italy from north Africa, thinking that it would be the easiest of the Axis countries to defeat. From Italy, the Allies would move into the rest of Europe, overtaking Germany. Eventually, after Italy proved more difficult than originally thought, the Allies agreed to attack Germany from the west in France.
5. My Inquiry Question is: Would creating a thematic curriculum that replaces the traditional US History textbook with alternative resources create increased student engagement and learning?
One resource I found useful was a book called Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen. I read this book a few years ago and re-read portions of it as I began to consider my Inquiry Question. The book concludes that the traditional US History textbooks we use make the content boring and unappealing to students, and explores various reasons to explain why the textbooks are unsuccessful. This was an incredibly useful resource because it gave me a foundation for my research by providing a number of different avenues to pursue. Even more useful was that the book is very well sited and many of the references in the book are potential resources for my further exploration into the topic.
Another resource I found useful was an article from Educational Leadership called Out with Textbooks, In with Learning. This article focuses on the way that textbooks organize and provide information. The authors argue that textbooks are basically reference books that lack focus on big ideas and central concepts. This related to my interest in developing a theme based history class that I think will help students better engage with the content. Using themes or central concepts allows a student see progression and make connections, rather than have to decipher which facts from an avalanche of facts are important.
Comments
Yadira Zapata - http://unahistoriadeunamaestra.blogspot.com/
Mike Rose - http://Mikejas.blogspot.com/
Andrew Eckloff - http://aeckloff.blogspot.com/
In this quote Ravitch is responding to a group of leftist historians in the 1970s who claim that the public education system is organized to intentionally maintain a socio-economic caste system and oppress the poor. I agree with Ravitch that public education is a system that has the ability to liberate the poor and the disenfranchised. However, it is clear that the education system is not succeeding at these goals. Schools in low-income areas are usually the lowest performing schools, making the quality of education worse in the schools where education can make the biggest difference. I do not believe the system is meant to intentionally keep poor people down, but we have allowed a system to exist that is failing to lift these people up.
Quote 2: “Testing had become a central preoccupation in the schools and was not just a measure but an end in itself.” (page 12) This statement gets to the heart of the problem with high stakes testing in our education system today. Most people would agree that it is important to assess student and teacher performance, but the focus on testing has overwhelmed so many other important aspects of education. We have lost sight of cultivating student learners, especially whole learners, by replacing them with student performers. If we educate our citizens that the end goal is more important than the process, we are eroding a society of critical thinkers.
2. I think Ravitch hits the nail on the head in her description of a well-educated person. To expand on her description, I think a well-educated person who has the ability to think critically about any given problem using both skills and knowledge accumulated throughout life. A well-educated person has the ability to see multiple perspectives and does not accept the status quo without due consideration of all perspectives. A well-educated person is someone who is continually striving to grow their knowledge and understanding.
3. I enjoyed our class discussion of the first two chapters of Ravitch. The part of the discussion that stands out to me was when we talked about teacher assessment. There seemed to be consensus that there needs to be some way to measure teacher performance. However, I think there was also agreement that exclusively using the high stakes testing method is not the best way to assess. Many people in class suggested different methods of assessment, but I was most intrigued by what Matt and Greg shared about the evaluation process at De La Salle. A regular evaluation by a committee made up of people representing different parts of the school seems like a fair and reasonable method. Such a committee could be informed by student evaluations, peer evaluations, principal evaluations, and the teacher's own self evaluation, in addition to test scores. This method allows for various types of information and gives the teacher more substantive feedback for improvement in the future.
4. Gap: CA SS 11.7.2 Explain U.S. and Allied wartime strategy, including the major battles of Midway, Normandy, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Battle of the Bulge.
Resources
website - http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/turning-tide-europe-1942-1944
book - Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War by John Ellis
article - Allied Strategy in World War II: The Churchill Era, 1942-1943 by De Lamar Jensen
EDSITEment is a website hosted by We the People which is a program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The website contains a plethora of lesson plans related to various periods of time in US History for teachers to use in their classroom. One EDSITEment lesson plan focuses specifically on the Allied strategies during World War Two. The lesson plan focuses on the agreement between the Allies to settle Europe by toppling Italy and Germany before they confront Japan. In their advancement on Europe, the Allies first decided to first attack Italy from north Africa, thinking that it would be the easiest of the Axis countries to defeat. From Italy, the Allies would move into the rest of Europe, overtaking Germany. Eventually, after Italy proved more difficult than originally thought, the Allies agreed to attack Germany from the west in France.
5. My Inquiry Question is: Would creating a thematic curriculum that replaces the traditional US History textbook with alternative resources create increased student engagement and learning?
One resource I found useful was a book called Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen. I read this book a few years ago and re-read portions of it as I began to consider my Inquiry Question. The book concludes that the traditional US History textbooks we use make the content boring and unappealing to students, and explores various reasons to explain why the textbooks are unsuccessful. This was an incredibly useful resource because it gave me a foundation for my research by providing a number of different avenues to pursue. Even more useful was that the book is very well sited and many of the references in the book are potential resources for my further exploration into the topic.
Another resource I found useful was an article from Educational Leadership called Out with Textbooks, In with Learning. This article focuses on the way that textbooks organize and provide information. The authors argue that textbooks are basically reference books that lack focus on big ideas and central concepts. This related to my interest in developing a theme based history class that I think will help students better engage with the content. Using themes or central concepts allows a student see progression and make connections, rather than have to decipher which facts from an avalanche of facts are important.
Comments
Yadira Zapata - http://unahistoriadeunamaestra.blogspot.com/
Mike Rose - http://Mikejas.blogspot.com/
Andrew Eckloff - http://aeckloff.blogspot.com/
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