Thoughts on New York Times Article

Unfortunately, due to class size, school size, an insanely complicated bureaucracy, a centuries old institutionalized way of thinking, along with a billion other complications, the model presented in the NYT article would never work in a large public school-at least in my lifetime that is. Of course the harsh reality is that at the moment, schools are in a physical and philosophical state of decline that seems to be getting worse and worse and worse every week. But, if we forget about reality for a moment and think reeaallyyy optimistically, there is a chance that if the masses start holding bankers accountable for the downfall of our economy rather than public employees and the economy somehow miraculously works itself out of a ditch, government and public opinion might begin to invest in progressive education programs. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe the ideas of people who want to bleed the life out of our schools and the Marlborough experiment are compatible. Why? They both get rid of teachers. Seriously though, this model of students creating their own curriculum sounds great. I can imagine I would have been a much better high school student if I were allowed to pick out my own literature. I know some small private colleges do this and from what I've heard from friends who have, it was a good experience. In reality the Marlborough experiment is much more aligned with the way things work in the real world and it gives students an opportunity to better discover their likes and dislikes, and strengths and weaknesses. Maybe if schools adopted similar programs on a small experimental level and monitored how they worked over a period of years they could slowly find ways in which to adopt them on a larger scale. Otherwise, it would be a logistical nightmare. 

Thoughts on my Lesson Plan

SO far our lesson plan is pretty good.As it stands right now it is still a work in progress. Our activity, which makes use of the online Library of Congress, gives students the opportunity to  research newspapers from the early Twentieth Century, and then asks them to rewrite their story in a "day in the life" diary format. I believe some of the lessons strong points is the concept itself, the degree of freedom it gives students to make choices throughout the process, its differential instruction, and the high degree of individual learning and sharing opportunities. So far, one of the weak points is its organization and student work flow. It seems like we have all of the major concepts down, but it needs to segue way from one idea to another a little easier.
    The amount of work that goes into this process is pretty intense. Although in the future I doubt I will spend this much time on a single lesson, I do enjoy the challenge and the process involved.  I guess that's what teaching school is all about. Just like anything else you want to be good at,  you need train hard and push yourself above and beyond the circumstances you will face in the field itself. So far, the hardest part of the project has proven to be coordinating ideas. Realizing this, our group has chosen to have a different person take the lead on each lesson. I was talking to my girlfriend about this and she mentioned something pretty interesting. She said that for group assignments in her nursing program the instructor asked groups to pick one leader. Once the leader had been picked the instructor then picked someone else anyway. I thought this was an interesting way to challenge people who are less prone to put themselves "out there" and take the lead. Anyway, overall the experience has been a learning one, and most importantly I actually feel like I'm getting better at navigating a computer-which I've historically sucked at!

Thoughts on our Unit Plan

The essence of our groups unit is to try to show how the technological revolution drastically changed American culture. The massive migrations to the cties and and the shift from the farm to the factory had enormous consequences on the lives of ordinary people. Although this change began more than one hundred years ago, its effects are still felt today. Today, despite the fact that there have been great improvements in working conditions in the U.S. (which we can thank the union movement for); today there are still frequent reminders of how the industrial worker faces a dangerous and abusive work environment. I believe a good way to get students involved with their community and learn about government would be to plan a field trip to the NYS Department of Labor in Albany. http://www.labor.ny.gov/sites/legal/laws/domestic-workers-bill-of-rights.page 
 In Albany students could take a tour of the Capitol building as part of a larger unit, but we could pay special attention to the Department of Labor. With any luck I could arrange a meeting with a representative from the Department so students could have an opportunity to ask questions and get some first hand information from an expert. By learning about the Dept. of Labor, students will be able to draw easy connections between the conditions faced by workers of the past and present. It is key for them to understand that a major part of the reason working conditions have gotten so much better is because of government regulation. What I would also like students to take away from this, is that our elected and appointed officials have a duty to listen to the concerns of their constituents. These people serve an important role in our communities, and it is our job as American citizens to practice a relationship with our government.

Thoughts on Copyrighting in the Classroom

Hmmmm. I'm not sure how I feel about this one. Of course as a professional instructor I will do my best to abide by copyright laws, but, I also feel like fundamentally following these rules could possibly become too much. I wonder at what point does following them to the T become ridiculous? For example, if using one hour of patented music in a media project is an obvious violation of the 30 second rule, what about 5min? O.k. that's still pretty obvious, what about 1 minute then, or 31 seconds? Of course these are really extreme examples, but, technically you would be breaking the law by going over the limit even by that one second.
   I really do believe in the reasonable enforcement of most intellectual property laws. I for one, actually believed Lars from Metallica, had a good point in his fight against Napster and free music sharing (too bad he will always be remembered as being on the wrong side of history-and a dork) Copyright laws protect innovation; and in the case against "free music sharing", I believe they enable outstanding talents' to build their careers and receive the compensation they've earned. However, I do see a difference in an educational setting. I believe educators, administrators, ed. lawyers...etc, should be focused on legally "freeing up", copyrighted material to the highest extent possible, not focusing their energies on enforcing them. I believe the k-12 setting should be considered a shelter from "many" of these laws- that are generally intended to protect profit, not  block students from creating really cool Power Points. As it stands now, because many of the laws are not clear and are not common sense, people will continue to treat them as if they were simply J-walking; ultimately resulting in silly litigation-draining valuable school funds and tax dollars.

Multi-Multi Tasking

After watching the full video of "Digital Nation", it is apparent there is no question about it...humans are  unable to multi-task(even with few distractions) and retain the same degree of concentration as they would if they weren't multi-tasking. Dr. Nass's tests show a significant correlation between distraction and lower performance on a single task, despite the pleas of "cronic multi-taskers" that say otherwise. While the public school system (as far as I know), doesn't allow the same freedoms to their students to distract themselves with digital devices as colleges do, the underlying theme here is that kids are spending an ENORMOUS amount of time with them, and it is effecting their school performance and even their personalities. Their estimated average of "50 hours per week" spent with digital media could cause developmental imparities and, as one interviewe put it, "create people who, 'generally speaking', aren't able to think clearly". The MIT professor at one point mentions that kids "new" shortened attention spans, are causing a shift in the ways teachers have to teach. "Now kids need to be constantly stimulated with media tools like Powerpoint in order to accomodate their constant thirst for distraction" And as one student put it " we now need to be overwhelmed by our teachers in order to distract us from our distractions".
   I'm not sure what the laws are like in universities, but, I'm sure in the public school system, good policy could prevent what was happening at MIT. Although this might become complicated as more and more students bring laptops to class, as we see in the documentary, there are ways of regulating this too. Even though kids nowadays are possibly dangerously overstimulated, they still need to be accommodated with the learning environment that most appropriately stimulates them. And this means nourishing their needs with the technology they  love. There is no going back now, we have entered the Matrix and Keanu cannot save us. So, it seems like finding the best, most effective technology is the answer, not turning the clock back to the "good ole days" of lecture that we too found  incredibly boring.
 

Thoughts About our First Class

I must say that the prospect of actually learning some real skills in the Secondary Ed. Social Studies program is very exciting. Not to be too cynical, but, while I have learned boat loads of theoretical information (much of which seemed like "golden rule" common sense ideas)- the program seems to lack emphasis on "actual" teaching skills. So, coming from me-an older student who has very little practice with state of the art digital technology- becoming masterful in some of these applications, and learning ways to bridge those skills into the classroom is like a breath of fresh air. As a soon-to-be history teacher I hope place a huge emphasis on teaching through the use of various digital mediums. I myself am a visual learner, and as I have matured as a student this fact has become exceedingly clear to me. Seeing a country's boundaries on a map or viewing historical pictures along with an account of an historical event makes a huge difference in the quantity and quality of the information I'm able to retain. If my students are anything like me, It is my hope then to always include some type of visual in my lessons to help them learn as much as possible. Learning how to effectively use various programs like SMARTBOARD and PREZI, in which I can harness archival footage, documentary, music, YOUTUBE, millions of images, etc... should prove to be an indispensable experience.