I responded to Hazem's blog.

Media and the Mind

Why can’t we participate in the media frenzy?  Dr. Roberts phrased his talk by saying that this is a technological revolution or a trend that cannot be countered.  In other words, the ship has left the port.  The increase in exposure and media use has drastically grown over the past fifteen years and the types of media keep evolving for young people.  But why can’t we, as teachers, employ this media to our own advantage?

Dr. Roberts made the correlation between large media exposure and use and a lower academic achievement with students.  Students that use over sixteen hours have dramatically lower grades and successful habits.  While it may take a societal effort to change that sixteen hour clip down to the reasonable seven or eight, we should employ strategies built within this trend to reach the students.  It seems to me that teachers should fight for this media time and immerse themselves in this independent world that students are creating for themselves.  This does not mean that teachers have to try and entertain the student at all hours of the day, but the allowances and resources of the internet and computers are vast.  Educational material and programming is very accessible.

As the internet invades the television, it ability for teachers to assign television or viewable programming will improve.  Most PBS and many other educational documentaries are accessible on YouTube and fifteen-minutes of a video and some additional reading is a way to include media resources that students could adapt towards.   Discussion boards and wikis can be easily accessed so that students can participate in social activities that are focused towards the curriculum.  Many secondary math classes are already working with a flipped or modified flipped classroom that let students use the power of stop and rewind lectures for increased retention.  Why can’t this be done with other interactive materials while requiring discussion on an online forum?

Of course this sounds great in this spacious ivory tower.  But there is still the problem of multiple exposures and the constant flipping of cognitive functions that prevent problem solving.  I’ve got no clue on that one.

More Pupils Are Learning Online, Fueling Debate on Quality

How does one model behavior through a computer screen?  How do they problem solve difficult tasks and compromise with other humans to create not-perfect, but manageable solutions?  These seem to be just two of the glaring problems with a comprehensive transition into “online learning”.  Although, through using the technology responsibly and with an inquiry focus, it could reap benefits and reach motivated students in ways that the typical classroom cannot.

Young people learn from their exposure to other people.  If a student has 40% less exposure to responsible adults, they will have 40% increased influence from other factors.  This could be peers or it could be media on the computer used during instruction.  Additionally, very few people remember the specific skills or content information gained in grade school.  They may use this information to build other important information later in life, but the skills are only sometimes retained.  Yet the relationships, motivations, and resiliencies created during school last must longer.  I find it very difficult to believe that student can make as serious relationship with instructors who have to construct their responses to fit into a digital communication.    

But there are also great opportunities here.  I love ordering and taking course from “The Learning Company”.  It’s how I get through, and look forward, to my commute every day.  These courses have a wide range of topics that would allow students to invest an opinion and choice into their secondary education.  What if administrators required that students take one online course every year, but required these to be elective classes where students could pick something of interest.  This would prevent cheating during the core academic areas and allow students an endless variety of course material that could help build critical thinking and organizational skills all the while preparing them for a university culture. 

Technology Resources for the Teacher:

Props to Josie for this compilation of tech tid-bits.  I’ve already made a series of vocabulary terms on quizlet and made them into three different flash card games, two testing sequences, and a review.  I’ve posted these cards onto our course webpage and linked it up for students.  They can now spend five minutes a night trying to compete with themselves and other classmates regarding who can match the terms fastest or master the terms without error.  Sweet!

I’ve also downloaded the cool timer and screen catch applications.  A lot of the freeware for these materials cause complications and these two seem to be pretty solid.  I love that the clock runs directly off an .exe and therefore doesn’t have to be downloaded onto the fascist district network. 

I've reviewed Jenny Temple's, Megan Manley's, and Natasha's blogs.  I've responded to Jenny and Megan's.

Interdisciplinary Learning

Interdisciplinary Strategy #1

The Gapminder World by Hans Rosling

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/hans_rosling_at_state.html

I’m planning on using this website and this “dataset” as a way to introduce statistics into my comparative government class.  Even though the subject matter is within my “discipline”, the comparisons of the charts and the analysis of trends have a statistic and mathematical base.  Students could choose two different axis and then write a short report on how each chart might have a correlation with a government institution or policy.   The spikes and trending changes could also link to specific historical events.  The challenge of incorporating this website and information is the assignment that students can work on the website through. 

Interdisciplinary Strategy #2

This Week in Review

I’m also planning on having students publish an online paper.  Students will work in teams of eight (with 5 different jobs within the group) to “publish” a paper that summarizes and editorializes the news and topics that are going on in a specific country.  Students will produce cartoons, op-editorials, and news reviews that will help students summarize current events in our countries of study (Russia, U.K., Nigeria, Mexico, United States, China, Iran).  In conjunction with their English teacher, students will practice these writing techniques individually in more scaffolded exercises.  They will then lead a discussion about the most interesting topic of the paper.  Students will be quizzed on their knowledge of their peers’ paper as well. 

Guiding Questions:

I'm split between two ideas here.

How does an "academy" model of school structuring help students create community, anti-stress, academic achievement and prepare them for professional goals?

What are the effects of interdisciplinary learning for students on a cognitive and environmental level?

Mind the Gap!

Mind the Gap-

1)      Quotes for a Response

a.       “In education, this belief in market forces lets us ordinary mortals off the hook, especially those who have not figured out how to improve low-performing schools or to break through the lassitude of unmotivated teens.  Instead of dealing with rancorous problems like how to teach reading or how to improve testing, one can redesign the management and structure of the school system and concentrate on incentives and sanctions” (11).

                                                               i.      It may be because I’m a pinko at heart, but it seems simple that market choices leave off an overall sense of ethics and responsibility.  Market forces produce productivity and allow progress to take over.  Ratvich focuses this idea onto education.  In the need for progress (achieving a higher rate), the forces have used the tool that creates greatest change.  But this change does not have a human sense of responsibility or moderation.  This can also be applied to community poverty and environmental problems.  A corporation is a great tool for dramatic change, but it does not have responsibilities toward local communities.  It has a responsibility towards progress and profit.  It can leave and change communities as necessary to achieve that goal.  This systemic educational change is similar.  It wants to prove that testing and choice are the best solutions, even if they are destroying communities in the process.

b.      “I feared that choice would let thousands of flowers bloom but would not strengthen American education.  It might even harm the public schools by removing the best students from schools in the poorest neighborhoods” (12).

2)      I’ve connected this quotation with a personal experience I had when interviewing at KIPP Academy in Oakland.  After an interview lesson, I sat down and had a conversation with the Assistant Principle and talked about the school’s goals and struggles.  Two fascinating facts stand out from that interview. I found out that KIPP has an admittance test that target’s the student population at average or above average students.  They see themselves as helping students who really do have a hope of getting out of terrible situations and become college students.  They also exclude students who would require I.E.Ps because of special education requirements.  This allows them to cream the “top” students from the rest.  Where does that leave the other students?  Anyone who has run a classroom knows that there is a reliance on the middle and upper students to serve as peer educators for the other students.  Students learn as much from peer study groups as they do from direct instruction in the front of the class.  The students that are left in the general education population just lost their “Harvard” and “Stanford” students.  What is the student’s responsibility towards their peers in the classroom?  How does individual ambition play into this idea?  The second observation I made was that students who misbehaved faced the punishment of expulsion with little leniency.  Their culture of high discipline work ethic left very little room for students to make mistakes.  And when these students left this positive experience, they were thrown back into the general education population and told to deal with the situation.  How does this affect the community as a whole when students are returning dejected?  How does this support the goal as a whole is the same idea Ratvich is discussing.

3)      Ravitch’s Educated Person:

a.       Students need a coherent foundation of knowledge and skills that grow stronger each year.  Knowledge and skills are both important, as is learning to think, debate, and question.  A well-educated person has a well furnished mind, shaped by reading and thinking about history, science, literature, the arts, and politics.  The well-educated person has learned how to explain ideas and listen respectfully to others.”

                                                               i.      How would you characterize a well-educated person?  What should any well-educated person know in today’s world?

1.       I disagree with Ravitch’s idea slightly.  I categorize an education person not by what they know, but by what they are aware that they don’t know.  This lack of knowledge increases listening, empathy, and enthusiasm to learn.  When someone recognizes that they do not know, they are more likely to be observant and gainers of knowledge in a particular community.  Imagine that a Chinese student of Economics walks into a classroom analyzing traditional American literature.  Can we categorize them as uneducated because they cannot readily participate in the conversation?  They are knowledgeable about their own information and are not un-educated.  If this person then chooses to realize that they don’t know the information and begin to actively absorb new information because they don’t pretend to already know it, then they are educated. 

4)      Class education talk

a.       Class covered the basic ideas.  Education is not changing as much as we think it is, and our reforms should be conservative instead of radical.  If the country is going to improve, high standards are going to be essential.  Ratvich also does an excellent job of expanding our discussion of what education consists of and how it has changed over the past century.

b.      If we were to further this discussion, the area that did not receive much attention is technology.  Technology really is a game changer.  Although it goes against Ratvich’s idea of slowing down and focusing on instruction, the ability for technology to assess students and find minute holes in instruction is amazing.  Teachers can get instant feedback using polling and testing information.  They can also be presented with information that goes against their predominant beliefs and therefore transform their own instruction when it goes against the testing facts.  What are the possibilities with technology and how can they help standards and instruction.

5)      One of the topics that will come up in preparing my Comparative Government class is revolution.  Admittedly, I’ve never participated in the revolution and my knowledge is focused on the American, French, and Russian revolutions.  I need to expand my content knowledge within more 20^th century contexts and study the topic.

a.       Book: The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall- Ian Bremmer

b.      Article: Democracy: A Global Revolution?- Dankwart A. Rustow

c.       Website:  http://honors.uoregon.edu/class/revolutions-20th-century-0 A course abstract that discusses a theme/guideline to research the topic.

                                                               i.      Something as simple as an abstract to a college course can provide wonderful information.  As a history teacher, I too often think that I need to research “facts” as my responsibility towards preparing a solid lesson for my students.  I forget that researching perspective changes is also important.  This website helps add a the perspective that most revolutions have a shared component that relates back to the democratization provided by the French revolution.  Revolutions are not the people asking to revert to oligartical rule of the pre-nineteenth century, but the people asking for a return to the “reform” movement that will help their society change towards a more positive future.  The denotative meaning focuses on this point rather than a return to a complete circle of civil society.

                                                             ii.      I’m also starting the J-Curve this week.  I’ll report on that next blog.

6)      Topic Questions and Resources

a.       The aspect of my research that I’m most surprised by is the connection between project based learning and the interdisciplinary academy approach.  Both the New Hampshire and South Carolina articles introduced academies as a strategy to implement project based learning.  Instead of thinking about community first, they went about the project as an instructional goal.  I knew that this was a byproduct of the types of programs, but I was not aware of how prevalent the projects were.  It also seems that the collaboration between teachers and administrators is very important.  Each of these studies reported a tension because radical changes had to be made in order to break away from the traditional system.  These changes caused stresses that in one case (Urban Education) caused several teachers to abandon the new reform movement. 

Student Responses:

Tanya Shah

Karen Vigna

Wilson Pang