Now I Know Why Elephants Never Forget: Ivory Notebooks!

When I began looking at the lists of suggested edubloggers given to us by Jeff and Kristin I started glancing through some of the different blogs to decide which ones to read and, before I knew it, I had read a stampede of them. There was a lot of great resources available here, like random History facts and pictures being given every day by "Today's Document from the National Archives"' blog, and much much more. I'm going to take a second in this blog to discuss my favorite two blogs I came accross.
   The first really good blog I encountered was "The Graphic Classroom". This blog gives a list of reviews on graphic novels that may be helpful in the classroom. I have long been a fan of graphic novels (though the ones I read may not be quite so educational as the ones reviewed in the blog), and I thought that using graphic novels in the classroom is a great idea! Not only are these novels educational, but they are easier to read and fun, which can have huge implications for educating slower readers or readers with ADHD (these students tend to find graphic novels much more stimulating and easier to pay attention too; plus they're easier to put down for a moment then go back to). I think that using graphic novels could raise interested levels and student knowledge because all the students would be more likely to actually read them. This blog is a fantastic resource for using graphic novels because it gives you a list of novels, how helpful they are, and ideas on how to teach them.
    The second blog that really caught my eye was called "Speaking of History", and it was a list of blogs and podcasts by Eric Langhorst. There was a series of blogs on Thomas Jefferson that I found particularly interesting, especially the one about Jefferson's ivory notebooks. Langhorst says that Jefferson used Ivory notebooks to keep notes during the day then transfered this information to his permanent logs at night. I thought this information had great applications for the classroom because I could have students make their own Ivory notebooks. These notebooks would obviously not be made out of real ivory, but they could be made out of a hard object that you could write on in pencil (I haven't thought of what to use yet, and actually commented on the blog and asked the author for suggestions). This activity would only take a day, and the students would feel really cool carrying around there notebooks and using them in other classes. As a very positive side effect students would get a good sense of what people would have used to write on in this time period, which would give them a great idea of what life then was like. I think this activity would also encourage students to take more notes because it would be fun to do in these new notebooks.


E.

Learning new technology, Yay!!! I went into this class pretty annoyed because I'm an old man at heart and not a fan of learning new technology. As professor Farnsworth of Futurama said, "I like being old; no one expects me to talk to them, I don't have to see my parents, and I don't have to learn all your young people doo-dads!" (that's probably not a word for word quote because it just came out of my head, but you get the point) Needless to say I viewed this class as quite an obstacle to overcome. To make matters worse the screen of my computer broke and I had to learn how to use evernote while only being able to see a quarter of my screen and that quarter was freaking out enough to cause seizures. However, as I began to learn how to use evernote I legitimately started to see the value in it and I actually understood it! Whats even better is that I learned to use other new things in class. I bought a mac to replace my old PC and now I know how to use skype on it. An even better use of technology I learned in class was how to use dropbox, which I used to convert all the files from my old computer to my new one! All in all, this class was a lifesaver. I think in the future I need to be less skeptical of new technology and stop being a closed-minded old man. In the end I really enjoyed this class and got a lot out of it, so bravo EDUC 504!


E.

Lost in an Art Fair

Screw north campus, screw Ann Arbor, and screw this freakin’ art fair! These were the (severely edited) words I uttered as I drove haplessly around Ann Arbor Friday morning in an attempt to find parking. After an hour of searching, cursing, walking, and smoking way too many cigarettes I finally managed to make it to class an hour late. Once in class I found that, had I read the e-mail, I would have known that parking was available in the permit only parking lots if you paid for it. So the moral of the story, boys and girls, is to read your e-mail.

            Anyway, on to the class; I surprisingly had fun in class on Friday, July 20. I say surprisingly because I’m not good with technology and expected this class to be very stressful, but it wasn’t. In fact I created a webpage and it wasn’t even hard! I even put things that I didn’t need in my page because it actually made sense to me! I thought that weebly could be a valuable asset for me in my future classroom, because it would be a great place to have my students make portfolios. The site would allow them to easily customize their pages, which would make them more attached and more likely to work hard to make their portfolio the best they can. It would also be easy for me to get online and check their work.

            The second half of class was equally productive for me. Jeff’s lecture was interesting, and I feel I really gained a greater understanding that something that may be easy for me may not be easy for my students. I also got a good look at how teamwork on activities may help students, as working with a partner made understanding the handout much better. The lecture on Angry Birds in math was also very helpful. I like the idea of using video games in the classroom to help build learning, and this was a good idea of how to do it. The specific idea of using angry birds won’t work in my history classroom, but it got me thinking about ways to integrate video games. All in all this was a great class!

Ugh, I wanna play "Borderlands" now

There are two parts to the reflective essay.  Part 1 is an analysis of the strengths and challenges you identified after revisiting your planning process, enactment of the lesson as portrayed in the video; and your discussion of your video with peers.  Part 2 of the reflective essay is an explanation of the lessons learned from the planning, enactment and discussion of this lesson, ones that can be applied to your future teaching. Each part of the essay is approximately three quarters to one page in length.  Refer to the guiding questions in previous parts of the assignment

Video games?! I get to write about video games?! As an avid gamer (well at least I was until June 19th, now I have neither the time nor the mental resources to play at all) this is a dream come true! I loved the readings this week. I've always thought that video games are a better way of educating people then lectures or classroom activities will ever be. For example, The Oregon Trail taught me more about the expansion west than any textbook ever could and I learned more about geography from Carmen Sandiago then I did from all my teachers combined. This is not just true for high school either; I remember once in college I was having a hard time grasping the concepts of early evolution until one of my friends turned me on to an internet game called Evolution in which the player controls a single cell organism and must complete a series of tasks to evolve it into the dominant life form in the galaxy. Playing that game gave me real insight into the dynamics and specific functions of evolution. Now, having said that I must say that this increased knowledge was only made possible because I had a strong foundation of knowledge from the information I learned in class.

This being said, I loved the idea of making class more like a video game, however I'm not fully sure I understand how this would be possible. I think James Gee had a lot of good ideas for turning video game concepts into classroom strategies, and Jane McGonigal had some great ideas for turning life problems into video games. However, I think they both missed one important aspect of why people play video games; people play video games to escape from everyday life, that's what makes them fun and not work. I think the question we should be asking if we want to use video game concepts in classroom learning is, "how can we make the classroom a place where students can escape the stresses of everyday life while still encouraging learning?" Once we figure out the answer to this question then we can truly use video game concepts to teach. To summarize this idea, class needs to be an escape from stress not the primary creator of stress in our lives (which it is currently). I don't have an answer to this question, but I think if someone could find an answer it could make a truly positive impact.

As wonderful as the ideas James Gee had, most are already being implemented or are not practical, let me go point by point through his paper and prove this:

1. Identity: This is America, we already stress that students create their own identity, not only as a student, but as a person as well. Gee talks about how video games allow people to upgrade their characters with new skills throughout the game (RPGs for people familiar with video game jargon, and for those who are not this stands for Role Playing Game, and is based on the idea that you can accomplish tasks that allow you to improve the skill of your character). However, the idea of an RPG is based on real life. Teaching students in the classroom is already giving them tasks that build their skills.

2. Interaction and 3. Production: We are already taught to engage students in interactive learning and let them produce their own knowledge through big questions (Think Big History Project).

4. Risk taking: I actually liked Gee's point on this one; students in school are discouraged from taking risks because they will fail. Students should be encouraged to take risks, but how does this play into the classroom? I've played video games where I've failed a boss fight 20 or more times before I beat it. If a student fails to learn a concept over 20 times they will probably give up, and even if they don't the sheer amount of time it would take to produce this knowledge would be counter-productive because they wouldn't have enough time to learn all the other information they need throughout the year.

5. Customization: teachers are already encouraged to customize school experiences as much as possible through differentiation. Furthermore, this is actually a big problem because students are so diverse that it’s hard to teach them all the information they need while allowing each student to work at his/her own pace. If we allow the students too much leeway in writing their curriculum they most likely won't learn nearly enough. I can speak from my own high school years and say that if I had had control over what I was learning I would not have learned more, I would have done as little as possible.

6. Agency: The more control students have the less they will do. This may not be true of all students but it will definitely be true for most students. I know it would have been true for me.

7. Well-order problems: This is already a concept being studied in classrooms. The Big History Project is a program based on teaching classes in proper order.

8. Challenge and consolidation: We already try to challenge students at the appropriate level; we call this zones of proximal development. Consolidation is the same thing as review and that’s been highly stressed (think Willingham).

9. Just in time and on demand: The idea that teachers currently don't give information on time and when it’s needed is frankly insulting and I don't feel the need to pontificate.

10. Situational meanings: Willingham calls this tying semantic meaning to knowledge to be learned and we've already learned to do this in the first month of teacher education.

In conclusion, let me restate that people play video games because they're stress relieving and fun. Class is neither of those things, and if we want to make classes more like video games we should focus more on making class an escape from real life. Furthermore, people like to play video games because they allow us to do things we are not allowed to do in real life like play professional sports, kill people (for anyone who feels appalled that I just said that watch a teenager play Grand Theft Auto for an hour, or even 32 seconds), or fly a spaceship, and I see no way of tying that into the classroom in any ethical or socially acceptable way.

Sorry for the negativity, I'm sure it stems from a lot of deep seated frustration.

E.

All Day Class Day

 The education 504 class on July 13 was very helpful for me. First of all, I really appreciated the lesson building activity we did in the first half of class. It was very helpful to get to work with a librarian and see what they will actually be able to do for me when I’m teaching. I had previously always thought high school librarians were just the people who told me to stop being too loud, turn in my library books already, and to get off MySpace (that’s right, those were the days before Facebook! God I just made myself feel old….Rachel, the librarian who was working with us—gave me a whole new viewpoint on librarians; she not only showed us some valuable resources on the internet, but also showed us how to use our high school librarians as a resource. I am very thankful for this as it will make life for a low-tech shmuck like me much easier.

                I liked being able to get together and plan a lesson plan from scratch. This exercise made me feel a lot more confident about my ability to lesson plan in the future, because I saw that we could actually do it. Furthermore, I learned a lot about working in a group and trying to integrate the goals of multiple people to reach a common end.

                The second part of class was less practical for me because I don’t really ever see myself using podcasts in my future classroom (but never say never right?). It was cool learning to make a podcast though, and I liked playing with the program. I must say that Abby and I made an appropriately creepy podcast for Friday the thirteenth too, and it was pretty fun...although all the other students studying in the brandon center probably didn't appreciate all the terror-induced screaming we did. On the whole though, this was a pretty enjoyable class.

E.

You Stay Golden Too, Soda Pop

Soda is not good for you. We all know it, and we don't need any legislators to prove it too us. The issue at hand is not the effects of soda (or for that matter regular vs. diet soda), but rather the rights of legislators and government agencies to tell citizens what they can and cannot do. If I were a teacher in a classroom who wished to use this article to educate my students I would put aside my personal beliefs and use this article to discuss the role of government in the lives of the everyday person.

In my imaginary history classroom, I give this article to my students and ask them to read it for the first fifteen minutes of class. After waiting very patiently (and probably sipping at my concealed mountain dew while snickering at my own hypocrisy), I then ask the students what they think of the article and subsequently get quite a volatile reaction from my students. Some state quite clearly that this law is stupid, while others preach on the evils of soda and how it destroys life, and yet others proclaim confidently that diet pop is not bad for you, just regular pop, so the ban is good! (I’m assuming this is the reaction I would get based on the explosive reaction in our own 504 class). For the first 5 minutes or so I allow them to argue to their little hearts’ content and get all the initial opinions out of their system. Once they have gotten a chance to spew their indignity at the gal of New York lawmakers (and then their indignity at one another—always in a respectful way, I’m sure), I would ask why this is an issue and guide the conversation until I get the answer I want. The answer is, as one of my students in the back so eloquently words it, “People in the government shouldn’t get to tell me what to drink; I should be allowed to drink whatever I want, even if it hurts me!” With a wry grin on my lips I ask my students, “But what is the role of the government if not to protect us from getting hurt?” A hand shoots up right away, and I call on the eager teenager in the front of the class, “But alcohol and cigarettes are more harmful than pop and they’re not illegal.” she states in a matter-of-fact tone. “Okay” I say, “so how do we decide what harmful things should be illegal and what shouldn’t?” This prompts a series of arguments about what things hurt us and what don’t; the conversation sidetracks majorly, and I am forced to bring the discussion back on line with a short history recap on the effectiveness of prohibition in the early 20^th century and the ability of the government to enforce an unpopular law. We discuss this for a few minutes until a student in the back is no longer able to hold in his bursting opinion and shouts out, “The government is supposed to protect me from other people” he says, “if I want to hurt myself that should be my right! It doesn’t matter if its alcohol or pop or whatever! ” Feeling that the discussion on law enforcement I allow the students to move into a discussion on what the government should be regulating, and whether or not this particular ban is constitutional (We had recently been exploring the different rights afforded us by the constitution, and I had hoped that this prior knowledge would help drive the discourse of this class, which it did!). During this discussion I carefully keep my own opinion to myself while allowing my students to explore the concept of lawmaking and what should and should not be made into laws. This goes on for a bit until I look up at the clock and see that there is only ten minutes left in class. “Alright guys!” I interject into the lively conversation, “so let’s say that the New York ban of soda is considered unconstitutional, what would happen then?” I see a timid student who hasn’t said much raise his hand, so I call on him, “Well” he says quietly, “The supreme court would overrule it.” This comment sparks another conversation about how the Supreme Court would go about declaring the ban unconstitutional, and this conversation lasts until the bell rings. As I watch my students filter out of my imaginary history classroom I smile to myself; I have used a single article to inspire my students to eagerly explore the workings of the executive, legislative, and judiciary branch of the government. All in all, I’d say it was a good day.

E.