Wednesday, March 23, 2011

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.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

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.