Synthesis Paper 4

            My WebQuest on Genocides throughout the 19^th century is one which is designed to help develop two important attributes a student in 2025 should hold, technologically savvy and being open-minded citizens of the world.  Being a WebQuest, the project is obviously almost entirely internet based.  Their research is coming from provided credible internet sources and they have the freedom to explore other sites for information as long as they recognize that they too are credible.  They will then get practice producing materials that will be published on the internet such as filming a movie and uploading it or creating a blog.  Finally the students will need to use their classmates posted information to type a paper summing up the whole project and what they took from it.  As the world shrinks from factors of globalization, it is also important the students become more accepting of differences.  It is intended that the students will realize that all these horrible acts are committed based on differences of believes, cultures, race and so on and start thinking about how just how negative discrimination can be. 

            This WebQuest very obviously relates to social justice because it educates the students on some of the most extreme cases of social injustice mankind has experienced over the last century.  They are then asked to reflect on how to prevent them in the future and why we as a society even allow them to continue in the first place.  It also is supposed to particularly reflex the ethics, equality and fairness portion of our classroom vision, as genocide would never be committed if humankind lived up to those standards.

            The aspect of this WebQuest that will be applying the NCSS 8 principle will be done through the final project, the “media awareness piece.”  This project will make them think about how technology has changed the spread of information.  It makes it available a much quicker rate than ever before and it can have massive effect on society.  While it may be used for negative reasons like affecting spread of private information, but it can also be used for good positive reasons such as spreading awareness for various events such as disease, natural disaster and of course, civil injustices occurring around the world.

            This WebQuest will also cover the NCSS 9 standard in many ways.  To study Genocide, one is taking part in studying conflict, peace (or lack thereof) and human rights issues, which are some of the main concepts of NCSS 9.  When one looks into the reasons of why or why not certain nations and/or groups like the UN involve themselves in an event similar to genocide it also gives insight on how global communication and economy works as well.  

Synthesis Paper 3

One of the main challenges of the future class room will be dealing with the concept of student’s diminishing attention span due to all the capabilities of technology.  This means that class rooms need to be reconstructed away from the tradition style of seating in rows while being lectured, to not only be more technology-centered but more hands on as well.  Linda Watsky, a teacher from the film “10 Big Ideas for Better Classrooms” by Edutopia puts it best when she says, “I’ve had students come back to me and tell me ‘remember that project we did!?’ they have never come back and said, ‘remember that test we did?’ (6:47)

            I would sell this concept to a school or a community by showing them one of the great examples of hands on projects from the video.  One of the projects that stood out most was the car project that the entire middle school was working on.  This project really covered an amazing amount of learning.  They built cars to learn about physics, they wrote car advertisements for language arts, they used car bill payments to work on math, which in term gave them real life practical experience as well as planned road trips which would help with geography and again real life experience and more.  This makes the learning experience much more memorable than totally separate exams from each class on different subjects which would be completely void of real life experience.

           

            The issue of growing diversity is again another issue that is going to have an effect of school reform in 2025.  One approach to handling diversity in schools is to approach the diversity of a community as a whole to help guide it towards a mutual desire to see improved education.  Gardner defines excellent school work as, “good in the sense of being responsible- it regularly takes into account its implication for the wider community in which it is situated” (p. 128).  If a school focused on the diversity of the community, every member of community could benefit from the increased focus on education.

            The video again offers two great way of selling this concept to a diverse community towards the end of the clip.  The first is the concept how one school in California put on a musical that was translated into multiple languages for the parents.  This gives the opportunity for the parents to physically watch and understand their student’s success and have them want to see more of it- education starts at home so getting them involved in this manner will be extremely beneficial.  Another crucial selling point would be the afterschool programs shown, where the school made its resources available for the whole community, so even citizens without children can benefit directly.

            No conversation about the future of teaching would complete without the discussion of the internet.  All students will need full and equal access to the internet to satisfy their maximum learning potential.  To sell this basic concept to a school I would use directly from Draves and Coates’ Nine Shift, the “top ten reasons why cognitive learning on the Internet is BETTER than traditional in-person presentations” list on page 223.  The list reads:

            10. You can learn at your own peak learning time of day.

            9. You can learn at your own speed.

            8. You can learn faster.

            7. You can interact more with the teacher.

            6. There is more discussion online.

            5. Participants come from around the world.

            4. You can learn from the foremost authorities and experts.

            3. Online learning is less expensive and thus more accessible.

            2. Internet links provide more resources.

            1. You can form a virtual community

           

This list is strengthened when one looks back on the film and sees how many parallels the film draws to this list such as forming a community, maximizing resources, accessibility, increased teacher interaction and so on.  This list proves that the internet can directly help with achieving the 10 Big Ideas portrayed in the film.

The Role of Schooling in 2025

Synthesis Paper #2

The Role of Schooling in 2025 will be different than today in terms of two major differences: technology and extremely diverse class room.  It will be up to schools to provide all of its students with equal learning opportunities despite cultural background and provide technological experience despite social economic status.

As mentioned in Synthesis Paper #1, technology makes information much more available and therefore downgrades the necessity of memorization of content.  This is only true however, if all students have access to the technology, which even in 2025, may not be the case.  Schools to the best of their financial ability should provide students with time to use the internet and computer both during and after school hours.  If assignments are designed to use internet browsing or would provide one student with an advantage over another, it is up to the school to make sure everyone has equal access.  This of course heavily relies on government funding, but computers and internet are becoming more affordable and accessible and hopefully will be less of a problem as time progresses.  The schools would be doing students a disfavor by not allowing them to have proper access to technology that they will be using in college or the business world after they graduate.

Multi-cultural education should be the goal of all schools and teachers in an increasingly diverse nation.  To help students from different cultures, teachers need to set up an environment that allows them to be successful while maintaining or developing a sense of cultural competence so they maintain a proud stance on their identity.  Taking these tasks further, teachers should be responsible for integrating various parts of all cultures into classroom instruction, which will relate to all students while simultaneously raising awareness of each culture to the students of different races and ethnicities.  By the same token, schools should also have it within their curriculum to bring to light the down side of prejudice, racism, hate and so on, so again students are taught to be more open minded and tolerant.

As a future social studies teacher, I have it a lot easier than most to include this in a curriculum.  Spreading cultural and inter-national awareness is inherently part of social studies, along with the negative of prejudice and racism.  The focus in a history or social studies curriculum in 2025 will be to spread the topics around, and not just focus on the same white faces that were more common when I was in middle and high school.

New Gadgets

I added two gadgets today.  The first is a link to my twitter account I just set up.  The twitter account I have set up is all about “this day in history.” It’s one my major interests related to history- checking to see what has happened on the current day in the past.  Using multiple sources, I am going to attempt to report every day about at least one historical event, birth, death, etc. that has happened in the past using only 140 characters or less (or whatever the amount is, it’s my first day on Twitter).  This concept is something I have always planned on using to decorate my future class room but haven’t quite figured out an efficient way of doing yet aside from just writing it up on the white board (suggestions welcome).

The second gadget is daily quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I figured because I have an Abe Lincoln themed blog, it would be appropriate to include this gadget because they both did so much for African-American civil rights and it would be interesting and beneficial to help spread the love and wisdom of Dr. King. 

Students and Teachers in 2025

Synthesis Paper #1

In 2025, content knowledge will be approached differently than it is today in social studies and history.  The importance of memorization will be significantly downgraded in importance because information is so readily available at one’s finger tips.  This is only true for trivial information and specific details such as exact dates.  The need for an overall understanding of themes and concepts however will be just as important then as it is today and is something that cannot be grasped by simply looking it up on the internet. 

The method of which we teach content knowledge will most likely be highly altered.  The traditional classroom setting will most likely give way to computer based learning.  This has the potential to make the role of the teacher less relevant but human interaction is much more effective at teaching the greater themes and concepts.  Also, the computer can teach students what happened in an era but is much less effective about helping students realize the connections between them as well as drawing the most important impacts of an era.  It will be the role of the teacher to make the necessary connections with the information students are pulling from the internet.

While the role of technology will dominate schools in 2025, the skills a student needs are not necessarily going to be all revolving around being technologically savvy.  The younger generation will have technology as their main source of entertainment, communication and so on so it is safe to assume that the vast majority of students will be up to date on technological knowledge, most likely even far ahead of a lot of their teachers depending on their age and tenacity.  Technology even becomes more and more affordable as the years go by so even the more impoverished children will have access to computers at home or their schools.  The basic skills of being able to pull information off the internet will already be embedded in most students in 2025 and it will no longer be necessary to waste class time teaching this information.  One aspect of internet browsing that will still be important however is teaching them how to recognize the credibility of a source and the dangers of false information and extreme bias that may be part of a site. Because so much of the information students receive will be coming from the internet it will be extremely important that they recognize the difference between a random individual’s blog and EbscoHost.

A student in 2025 must also obtain certain attributes and skills to be successful in the classroom that do not involve technology.  Schools everywhere in the United States are becoming more and more diverse so all students need to be very tolerate, respectful and understanding of their peers’ differences.  Colleges are not getting any easier to get accepted to either so the level of competition is also greatly increasing by the year.  Children and teenages will have to develop better work ethics and increase their focus on school to become extremely resilient students to make it to the next level of education. 

As a teacher in 2025, I will not have the same advantages as my students in terms of being immersed in technology since birth.  I currently am relatively computer capable but I could still use some help in some areas, especially considering the rapid development of new technologies.  I am also currently being taught teaching strategies and activities that will most likely be irrelevant and outdated by 2025, so it will be on me as an active teacher to stay updated on all the potential learning tools that technology has to offer.

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