Class Assignment – Synthesis Paper #4

For my webquest, I wanted to cover a subject that would be a meaningful and fun assignment for my students.  One of the biggest social issues I could think of was the student’s future involvement in shaping our society through democratic participation.  I decided to introduce this civic involvement by giving them a project to create a national and local election campaign focused around a particular political issue.  The webquest focuses on students working in cooperation with their classmates and building this valuable life skill of collaborating with others but at the same time highlights the individual skills each student possesses.  In their future, students will need to take an active role in their civic duties and this is a perfect opportunity for them to understand all that is involved in organizing national and local elections.  Through my webquest assignment, students will understand the valuable asset technology provides in connecting not only with their local community but also with the nation. 

The webquest relates to the core values and vision of the class by addressing students to take a civic responsibility in shaping the world we live in.  The webquest is an authentic learning experience and prepares them for their role as future voters.  Students will gain an appreciation of the way national and local politics can impact society and through this appreciation, they will continue to stay involved in politics and be lifelong learners.  The webquests allows students to work with different technologies both individually and in collaboration with their classmates. 

The webquest relates to NCSS Principles 8 and 9 by allowing the students to center their group’s political campaign around reaching out to their fictitious constituents through different technologies and the web.  As part of the assignment where the students will present their campaign strategies to the class, I have asked each student to add a post on their Candidate’s blog describing how the use of technology affected their campaign development.  I have asked which technologies helped them in the development of their campaign and also which technologies were not included that would be helpful.  This webquest really allows students to use technology to reach out to others and connect with people and places they necessarily would not be able to without.  In terms of a political campaign, technology has become a vital component in the exposure a candidate can have in a short amount of time.  Before the revolution of television and computers, election candidates had to travel by train or cars to meet their potential constituents and they were very limited to whom they could interact with on a more personal level.  With technology, candidates are able to come face to face with voters in their own homes making elections much more intimate and personal. 

My First Glogster Post for EDCI Unit Plan Assignment

I just made a new Voki. See it here:

This is a Voki I made for my EDCI 567 Unit Plan assignment.  I will have the students select a person involved in the Vietnam War and they will have to create a one minute description of their character's role in the War.  They will then create a Voki of the person and record description to the Voki and present it to class. 

Class Assignment - Synthesis Paper #3

As the world continues to digress away from the ‘old-fashioned’ ideals of education, a shift in technology and learning has forced us to restructure and reconceptualize the future of education.  Public Secondary Schooling should reconceptualize (structure, curriculum, and pedagogy) to be effective in 2025 by incorporating more community and parental partnerships, integrating technology, and encouraging project-based learning. 

By incorporating the community and parents into schools, not only does it encourage students to hold themselves accountable for their schooling, but students truly believe they are a valued resource in their communities.  Taking from Lipton and Oakes’ strategy of some constructive forms of engagement from parents, teachers will be supported, health and social services can be offered, culture can be bridged into the curriculum and parents and teachers can develop a partnership in the students education.  Teachers and parents must come to a healthy understanding in regards to each party’s involvement in the student’s education which can be easily solved with good communication.  Respect for each other’s role in the student’s life, as Garner suggests, must be of the upmost importance in communicating the wants and needs of the relationship between teachers and parents.  Communities, as suggested in the edutopia.org video 10 Big Ideas for Better Classrooms, want to interact with schools in order to show the students that they, the students, are a valued member of society.  This is important do to the fact that communities are already shifting to.  As Draves and Coates describe, the community in 2025 will continue to evolve into divisions of neighborhoods where the work environment may become even more internet based providing options for telemarketing and thereby forcing members of the workforce to seek social interaction through interest centered groups and clubs.  By incorporating the community and families into the student’s life, you provide a support system that will build confidence and reassurance in the student’s abilities making them want to contribute back into the society which supported them. 

The integration of technology has already become such a large development in schools in the past decade, but in 2025 technology will be found everywhere in every aspect of schooling.  Draves and Coates demonstrate how even the technological advances of the twentieth century, including cars, suburban and office building sprawls, is quickly losing ground against the intense presence and growth of networks, intranets and telecommuting.  For students, technology will be integrated into schools in scaffolding multidimensional aspects of instruction to challenge and engage student interest making it a fundamental aspect of learning.  As shown in 10 Big Ideals for Better Classrooms, schools are beginning to understand that students respond well to technology and applying it to class work.  One example was a group of students using GPS tracking devices to pinpoint the location of frogs on a class field trip.  The teacher describes how the students would not be interested on the field trip had it not possessed some kind of technological instruction making it a meaningful lesson.  Students are even engaged to participate in ‘game show’ review where each student has a handheld devise and respond to a multiple-choice on a television screen.  Where educators cannot shy away from is being intimidated in integrating technologies into instruction and there must be a continuation of teacher development programs to ensure their confidence in using different technologies. 

The final concept of encouraging project-based learning not only encourages student to learn through projects but also focuses on teaching them the fundamentals of working in a collaborative effort with their peers to gain valuable life skills.  In the video on edutopia.org, there are many examples of how projects and student-centered learning has been a success in the comprehensive assessment of the student’s learning as opposed to standardized tests or appraisals.  Students are energized and focus and feel a greater sense of accomplishment when they complete a project rather than perform well on a test.  The tangible nature of projects and seeing an end result allows the students to evaluate their achievement from start to finish, building their confidence in learning.  Draves and Coates describe the advantages of learning through the internet by allowing students more immediate methods of discovery and experimentation and a relevant connection to the lessons.  Students will not only accomplish projects through the internet individually or exclusively, but students will have to continue to work together to collaborate their strengths and weaknesses.  As Gardner suggests, students must take an example from the respect teachers demonstrate in working together to pursue the common goal of a student’s success.  Students must use their own ways of learning and collaborate with other students and be open to other ideas and suggestions.  As many people in the workforce find, there is a time for linear thinking and then one should think outside of the box: students need to learn to cooperate with other learners in order to achieve their goals. 

Sources Used:
10 Big Ideas for Better Classrooms
Draves, W.A. and Coates, J. (2004). Nine Shift: Work, life and education in the 21st century.  River Falls, WI: LERN Books.
Gardner, H. (2008). 5 Minds for the Future.  Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.
Oakes, J. and Lipton, M. (). Teaching to Change the World.  New York, NY: Mc-Graw Hill.

Class Assignment - Synthesis Paper #2

The role and responsibility of schooling in the future will require aptitudes not only from the teachers and school communities but also from the students themselves. Teachers will be able to accept the challenge of a diverse population of students and the development and challenges of a global expanse of technology and progress. This diversity I mentioned not only includes their student’s race and ethnic backgrounds but also the student’s interpretation and use of technology and innovation far beyond the methods the teachers themselves are familiar with. Schooling will consist of continuing educational programs not only for their faculty, but for the parents and community as well that will instruct them in skills and teaching design in order to nurture and develop the citizens of tomorrow. Students will have to be disciplined to obtain a skill set to learn in a changing new world of traditional school communities and global citizenship. With the Internet already having a powerful presence in today’s curriculum, its involvement will only continue to influence daily instruction and students must be prepared to adapt their style of learning to take advantage of it. In Howard Gardner’s book 5 Mind of the Future, five kinds of minds are characterized all of which will be essential to not only survive in the future but to thrive in it as well. His five minds include the Disciplined Mind, the Synthesizing Mind, the Creative Mind, the Respectful Mind and the Ethical Mind. Gardner says that a creative mind has been praised in the emerging technological age and I could not agree more. I believe the students who have a more creative mind will become more connected with the ever changing world and will eventually design the new future for technology and its interpretations into one’s everyday life and their schools must evolve in order to nurture and support their development.
The experience that teachers should employ to make their student’s learning more authentic is to in fact treat each of their students authentically. Students should not be observed as a statistic to measure graduation rates or standardized test score. Students must be viewed as a different learner who is a different pupil from their peers, not seen as a student who can either learn or one who cannot. As Jeannie Oakes and Martin Lipton point out in Teaching to Change the World, teaching communities have fostered a belief that certain students are judged based on whether or not they have the capability to learn and depending on that capability they are challenged accordingly or not at all. I completely disagree with this theory and believe that every student, if challenged in a nurturing and positive environment, should be able to exceed the school’s expectations as well as their own. It is not acceptable to set such low expectations for students simply due to the fact that the global society has high potentials for knowledge, ingenuity and creativity. Teachers and school communities would do more harm than good by not challenging a student and helping them reach the increasing potentials society calls upon them to live up to. Teachers and the teaching community will be forced to change their own styles of teaching to support and nurture the new kinds of thinking that both Gardner and Oakes and Lipton defend.

Sources used:
Gardner, H. (2008). 5 Mind of the Future. Boston, MA. Harvard Business Press.
Oakes, J. and M. Lipton. (2007). Teaching to Change the World. New York, NY. Mc-Graw Hill.

The Great Wave of Political Change...

In the past week or so, the nation’s eyes have been focused on Wisconsin as public union benefits and collective bargaining protest against changes in the states’ law that will restrict or eliminate collective bargaining rights. The new Republican Governor Scott Walker says that his agenda calls for a necessity to get Wisconsin’s fiscal house in order to avoid significant layoffs of state employees.  Wisconsin is now not the only state to negotiate or address the concerns over the state’s fiscal situations or public union benefits.  Ohio will present a bill in their state senate that concerns issues of tenure in layoff decisions, increases in health insurance premiums, institute merit-based pay for some public-sector workers, and ban any public-sector employee paid by tax dollars would be banned from striking.  Indiana, Tennessee, Illinois, California, Michigan, Iowa, Alaska and New Jersey have addressed their concerns of pension benefits, collective bargaining issues, ‘right-to-work’ bills, and healthcare premiums. 

This has been labeled as the most significant labor issue since the induction of unionism in the early 19^th century.  This new wave of tweaking state policies and addressing fiscal concerns is only the beginning of what is to come.  This not only will change the state politics but will also change the national political scene.  As I begin to enter into a career in teaching this movement and change has become an issue I will be watching very closely.

Class Assignment - Synthesis Paper #1

One of the first assignments in a graduate course I am taking is to compose a synthesis of the change in the content of history and social studies along with student skills in the year 2025.  You may think my visions of the expectations of education and its reform are way off in the distant future, but from a technology standpoint the changes we will face in 2025 are just around the corner.

The content of social studies and history in the year 2025 will become not only a standard study of important dates and facts but also about attaining analytical skills to aid them in becoming part of a global community.  Students will gain a broader understanding of how the world is connected in the age of globalized networking.  The social network through the Internet will enhance the student’s exploration of different cultures by conversing directly with students in other parts of the world.  Students will no longer be expected to attend class in a traditional school building but will work from home in accordance to their own schedule.  There will be international communities of learning that will connect students from all over the world into online classrooms.  Social studies and history will no longer focus on regurgitating facts and dates but will entail tangible thoughts that question the students understanding of the past to anticipate and manipulate their future successes.

As a student of history and social studies in 2025, students will have to take on a variety of skills in order to excel in this content area.  Collaborating with other students will become a major tool in organizing and producing historical analysis.  Singular thought processes will no longer be a desired skill to translate into the workforce of 2025.  Efficiency and self discipline will be essential skills for students in 2025 due to the transformation of learning and work environments.  The outcome of a student’s work will carry more weight than the amount of time they put into their results due to the demand for instant gratification.  Even fundamental skills such as language and methods of communication will change drastically as handwriting and cursive classes will be replaced with keyboard and browsing instruction.  Students of 2025 will need to be perpetual learners and cannot afford to be anything but insightful not only in their studies but in their future careers as well.  A student’s judgment of reliable information from the Internet will become a vital skill since most of their gathered research will come from websites.  Innovation will take on an entirely new meaning for students.  Creativity and originality will become a basis for problem solving and will be essential tools in the workplace. 

In order to keep my students engaged in my classes it will be absolutely essential for me to keep up with the times of technology and be willing to try new things.  I will always be open to use new forms of technology suggested by my students as long as it does not dissuade the goal of our lesson.  Along with the use of technology, I will encourage students to challenge their analytical skills by solving their problems with innovation and creativity.  Our students will always be the future and as a teacher, I intend to give them every opportunity to meet that future with innovation and originality.