RE; Rachel Dover's final

When I listened to Rachel's final project, I noticed a lot about what she learned in CEP 416 this year. Her tour was based around her portfolio and I noticed how she had figured out how to use links to maximize the ease and efficiency of navigating her website. Using links to each individual lesson and providing links to each page on the home page both make it very clear how to find all the information on her website while still keeping a lot of information very organized instead of overwhelming. She even commented that it was pretty easy to figure out how to get Weebly to work so well, indicating that using Weebly is something she will take away from this class and likely use in her future classroom. She also thought about ways to use technology to make things easier for her students as well. For one of her lesson plans, she had students use Mindomo to make concepts maps online. Just like her use of Weebly, once students figure out how to work with the interface on Mindomo, it makes communicating and organizing their ideas a whole lot easier. For example, in her lesson, she has students use it to make concept maps for a picture book. Giving younger students the opportunity to use a technology successfully will give them more confidence with technology, the same confidence she now shows in her use of Weebly.

RE:Brenda Cole's final

Listening to Brenda's final tour gave me a lot of insight about what she learned in CEP 416 this year. One thing that stuck out to me in her reflection was the practical usefulness she saw for her website portfolio going into the future. She talked about how she is putting some of her lessons from her others classes up on her website as well and is clearly going to use it to her advantage as she works during her internship on improving her desirability in the eyes of employers, both to provide an organized place to put all of her accomplishments and also to show off her ability to use technology effectively. Another thing I got from Brenda's final is that she wants to use technology to enhance student creativity, not simply to make lessons more engaging. I noticed this when she talked about one of her integrated technology lessons in which she found a website for students to use when writing poetry that helps them be more creative. Finally, I noticed that one of the major things she got from this class was how technology can be used for collaboration, whether through blogs that allow readers to contribute their ideas or through the ease of using Google Docs to make edits on group work.

What I learned this year

This is a Jing screencast that explains some of the different things I have learned in CEP 416 this year, specifically using items that I have posted on this blog.

photo story lesson

This is the photo story that I have created for my second integrated technology lesson. Visit my technology integration page on my website to read more about the lesson plan:

One of those moments

I learned a lot this week about a new way of looking at math education that has completely changed my ideas about how I want to teach math if I end up in that subject area. One major element of my social studies teaching philosophy has always been that I want my students to engage in critical thinking about the subject material every day in my classroom, but I had never even considered how that would occur in math. Through my own math experiences and my jobs in college working with math students, I have always experienced math as based on three principles: that math is about knowing and applying the correct procedure, that the teacher shows the students the solutions and then the students repeat the procedure, and that there is one definitive correct answer. All those assumptions were rocked when I learned about a student-centered math classroom, whose advocates argue that students learn math better by actually doing it, promoting a classroom where teachers do not tell students how to do math as if it is a fact to be memorized but rather encourage them to solve tasks that get them to engage in the process of creating knowledge about math. I was enthralled to discover that the principle that students remember better what they think about on higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy could apply to math as well. If I end up teaching math, I will not have to cringe every time I tell my students that they "just have to memorize how to do it" because I have had a revelation that students will for sure remember math once they fully understand it. Since there not will be one ultimately correct way to solve a problem that the students either remember or don't, there will be no excuses for not trying to think about the problem because a student thinks they can't recall what the teacher wanted them to do.

Original Image: Math Class
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Wikiing (vb.) Blogging Collaboratively

Yes I did just invent a new word for the title of this post. However, this novel verb is appropriate because using wikis is a very action-oriented process. Every person who is allowed to collaborate on a wiki has the power to add new ideas, elements, and pages or edit those statements that already exist. Aside from Google Docs, it is the best technology to use for collaboration because of the ease of allowing everyone in a group to contribute their own work, thoughts, and perspectives in a place where everyone else can immediately see them at their own convenience while still keeping the whole creation organized together. It allows group members to see both individual contributions and the sum of all their work without minimal effort to switch between those two views. This is what makes it better for groups to use than a standard website, which can only be edited by the creator. Even if all group members are allowed to have the role of "creator," that would only allow one person to edit it at a time, making it less convenient than a wiki. I had never thought about it before, but when I have group projects in my classroom that requires a presentation of results, I will at some point have students use a wiki to take advantage of the ease of collaboration. A wiki has the same advantages for group work over a blog because a blog is not a place where everyone is a equal contributor of knowledge. The blog may have significant interaction and conversation in its comments, but the blogger still had the power to solely determine the initial intent and content of any post. However, the fact that a wiki is so useful for group work also makes its uses more limited. In any context where students are creating presentations of knowledge that are primarily or completely controlled by one student, I would encourage them to use blogs or other websites instead because I would want the creator to have personal control over their work and have it safe from being edited by others without them even knowing. Even in a situation where students are required to provide feedback and editing for other students' projects, I would have the students use a blog or standard website instead in order for each student to maintain their own autonomy over their creation. Here is a screen shot of the wiki I made for this class, a task that I think secondary students would be able to do based on many topics in social studies:

Technology: For Teachers Only?

Yesterday in my TE class, I got to watch a presentation by a current social studies intern about incorporating technology into the classroom, specifically during our upcoming internship year. One of the tools she talked about extensively was Google Earth, explaining how her students loved when she used it, raving about how they were so much more engaged in her lectures, and showing us an example of a tour she had just put together as part of a lecture on the Civil Rights Movement. During this whole time, I could not help but compare what she was doing to the integrated technology lesson plan I designed for this class, which asked students to use Google Earth to come up with theories about how geography impacted Civil War battles. I was especially intrigued when she said that her main use of Google Earth was to keep students engaged, but she would never let students use it themselves because it is too much fun and they would simply goof off on it. Suddenly, an intern with way more classroom experience with me had unintentionally suggested that my lesson would be a complete bomb in an actual classroom. This was an important wake up call for me because it showed me how I may be taking my teaching philosophy too far. Although I would argue with her that teachers should not hoard the use of technology because they assume that students are too immature to handle it responsibly and use it productively, her comment made me notice that I have allowed a central element of my teaching philosophy, the emphasis I want to have on student discovery and student-created learning, impact my understanding of how technology can be used in the classroom. It has made me think overwhelmingly about how my future students will use technology in my classroom in lieu of also reflecting on how I, as the teacher, will use technology for instructional purposes outside of students doing assignments with technology. Instead, I need to make sure that I keep a balance in my classroom between technology that I use and technology that I assign my students to use, remembering especially that I should not expect my students to use technology frequently if I do not make a concerted effort to do so myself as well. This is a crucial light bulb moment for my continuing development as a future teacher.

Original Image: Lightbulb
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How Do I Know?

Like many other kids, I was always changing what I wanted to be when I grew up, including possibilities such as meteorologist, mapmaker, and lawyer. It was only near the end of high school that I considered becoming a teacher. However, now that I am 5 weeks away from graduating and moving on to my internship, I confront the same question as many of my fellow seniors. How do I know that I'm really on the correct career path? One way I have been able to answer that question is by looking at how I prefer to spend my time. For one thing, I notice that whenever I have a paper due in my history classes, if I also have some type of reading for my education class, I will do that reading first because I prefer to spend my work time learning about education than writing about history. Furthermore, I always look forward more to going to my jobs, tutoring student athletes and teaching math recitation sections, or to my placement, than going to classes where I learn more content. It could also be some senioritis, but I feel like every step I take towards being a teacher is a welcome replacement for being a student and I would not feel that way if I were not going in the right direction. Even the hard work of designing and writing lesson plans is homework that I find enjoyable relative to any other assignments I have had as a student. In general, I have noticed that I prefer helping other people learn than actually learning more myself. I firmly believe that people should like their careers and I do not think that will be difficult for me, even though I do wonder how it is possible for a tax accountant to enjoy March and April:

Original Image: taxes
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By: Mat Honan

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My Two Sense on Technology Distractions

Every person at MSU, including all of the professors, knows that students in a lecture hall who brought their computers did not bring them because it is easier to take notes on their computer. They brought them because they want a distraction, whether it be Facebook Chat or flash games, from whatever the professor is trying to bore them with today. An article I found on Twitter argues that educators at both the secondary and post-secondary level have to watch out for the dangers of technology distractions. It argues that some high school teachers simply adapt technology into their classroom whimsically without worrying about any distractions it might cause for their students, specifically referencing the demand for computer labs in schools. The author also assets that students benefit more from taking notes by hand because they remember things better. Although I wholeheartedly agree with the suggestion of banning laptops in most college classes, I think this author has missed the main problem with technology use in secondary classrooms. The problem is not the technology itself, but rather how it is used in lessons. As long as technology is used in a purposeful, specific manner that provides students with a clear goal and established structure for what they should be doing with the technology, I think teachers can incorporate it into assessments, activities, and other lessons as much as possible. Distractions occur not because technology is inherently distracting, but rather because teachers have students use technology without a clear purpose. Why have students research and read online when you can give the same sources as handouts? Instead, save technology for having students create Prezis or storybooks for an assessment or for an online interactive activity that keeps students focused on the task at hand. Just like any other lesson, the amount high school students are distracted is more determined by the engagement, communication, and purposefulness of the lesson, not whether or not technology is used. Students still found ways to be distracted from boring lessons before technology came around:

Original Image: maybe it will help...
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by: Hans_van_Rijnberk

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Ways to Use Google Docs

If I taught in a social studies classroom, one thing I would use Google Docs for would be whenever students were creating papers, reports, or presentations as a group. One of the major benefits of this is efficiency. Instead of all the students in the group crowding around one computer, with one person typing and four different people confusing them with different ideas, the students could work separately on different computers and all be making substantial contributions to the final product at the same time. Although this is somewhat possible without using Google Docs by simply splitting up the assignment into even parts for each group member to work on separately, Google Docs could streamline that process. First of all, students would be able to see exactly what their peers were working on at their own convenience without having to give up their own progress to go look at another computer. For example, if one student says that they just found a few pictures to add to a presentation and wants the rest of the groups to approve them, all the student has to do is make that simple request and each of his or her peers will be able to view the pictures at a convenient break point for them, either all at once on different computers or all separately at different times. Furthermore, it might even be a good idea to have one member of each group, preferably a student with high writing proficiency who also respects the work of other students, take on the role of editor, simply monitoring the rest of the groups' work and providing feedback on every member's contributions.

I also thought about a way to use the Spreadsheet function if I taught math. Since multiple students can edit it at the same time, it would be ideal for a group math inquiry lesson. For such a lesson, students each collect data individually, then combine all the data together, and finally use that data to discuss possible conclusions about math ideas. One example of this would be as an introduction to logarithmic and exponential functions. Each student in a group of five would be assigned a function, three exponential and two logarithmic. However, they would not know too much about how those functions work or what they mean. Instead, I will only show them how to use their calculator to determine points on the function. For example, students may have never heard of ln (natural log) before, but the only thing I would tell them is where the ln button is on their calculators so they could determine ln(x) for any x that I gave them. I would then ask each student to find 10 specifically assigned points on their function and record them in that group's spreadsheet. Google Spreadsheets are so useful for this lesson because they allow the work of data collection on these functions to be split amongst the group, but they would still all be able to input their data into the compilation spreadsheet immediately when figure it out. I would also be able to have them start with spreadsheets that have certain boxes colored in for a specific purpose. Once all the students in the group have inputted their data, the Spreadsheet will look something like this:

Then, the group would have a chance to brainstorm answers to the question of why Mr. V highlighted certain boxes different colors. They could all combine their suggestions easily in a separate document on Google Docs and then discuss them as a group, asking for clarification and pushing each other's thought processes. Hopefully, some of the groups would come up with some of the patterns indicated by the color coding, such as the ideas that e^x and ln x are inverses and the pattern that any number raised to the 0 power is equal to 1 while any logarithm of 1 is equal to 0.

Those Crazy Teachers in Wisconsin

Honestly, I cannot remember the last time that teachers themselves were at the center of such a significant political controversy as all the debate currently surrounding public employee unions and state government budget cuts. I always had the perception that teachers were one of the universally respected careers that no one ever said anything bad about, along with firefighters. The reason that no one ever wanted to say anything bad about teachers is that everyone acknowledged their significance to society, everyone felt indebted them because no one else can become successful in their careers without at some point having a good teacher, it was clear how much hard work the job took, and the general perception was that there was something altruistic about being a teacher, given the other often higher paying jobs that intelligent people with masters degrees could obtain. That was only until politics got involved. The basic fact of the matter is that political rhetoric on both sides of the aisle can completely tarnish the image of any individual or group (look at poor Sarah Palin) and that is what is currently happening to teachers. Suddenly the altruism and sacrifice people used to associate with teachers is being replaced with the idea that teachers quit trying once they get tenure, never have to do any work after 3:00, and are greedy, lazy public employees who hoard all the best benefits and selfishly refuse to give them up for the good of their entire state. Teachers have always lacked the monetary prestige of many other professional jobs, such as accountants, lawyers, and doctors, but out saving grace was that people appreciated teachers and thought they were unselfish, hardworking people who took on the challenging task of making their careers about the betterment of students. With that perception on the way out as teachers become more embattled in political warfare, I can only hope that future toddlers who tell their parents they want to be teachers will not be viewed as if they just said they wanted to collect people's trash for the rest of their lives.

Original Image: Seattle garbage truck
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by: Zena C

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The damaging cycle of poverty and student absenteeism in urban areas

I just read a New York Times article that I found on Twitter which really got me thinking about the unfortunate presence of social reproduction in urban school systems. The article discusses current downward trends in attendance rates throughout Chicago, in general public schools and in charter schools. Obviously, students who have poor attendance are not only more likely to struggle in school and less likely to learn skills they need for jobs or college, but are also significantly more likely to not even graduate at all, often dooming them to a life of minimum wage jobs, uncertainty, crime, and drugs. All of the reasons the article gives for why some students have low attendance rates come directly from the cyclical effects of our economic segregation and stratification. Even the common reason that students are attracted to the idea of playing hookey to watch TV or play video games is a more likely issue in low income areas because of the prevalence of single parent families where the students' mother or father is lucky to have enough time and energy just to confront their child about the issue, let alone get away from work responsibilities enough to be home to stop them from coming back home. Furthermore, the fact that some students cannot make it to school due to how dangerous it is to walk through their neighborhoods also stems from the economic segregation that created these urban ghettos in the first place. Other reasons students might stay home, such as reoccurring sickness due to lack of health care and the necessity of taking care of younger siblings because child care costs too much money are also direct results of the widening gap between rich and poor in our country. I believe that any efforts to improve school attendance, such as starting early with emphasizing attendance in preschool and focusing extra resources on secondary students with chronic absenteeism, will only be partially effective as long as our nation's cities remain economically segregated and these students are stuck in ghettos, leaving their seats as empty as their minds:

Original Image: desk
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by: Robert S. Donovan

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Allowing secondary students to get in touch with their inner child

The technology that I explored this week was ZooBurst, a tool that allows students to make their own pop up books online. Here is an example of how I think students could use ZooBurst in a history classroom, in this case to present the story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. I could not get the Jing to post here so just click here to view the show or you can click through it on your own here on the blog. Just make sure you click on the dialogue exclamation points above the characters.




One of the advantages of using ZooBurst in a secondary classroom is that it brings the "fun" factor back to school assignments. Many students will be familiar with pop up books from their younger childhood and will often have enjoyable memories associated with their favorite ones. Therefore, a ZooBurst would be a great tool to encourage students to use for presentations of information because it would be more fun than a powerpoint. Another advantage is that ZooBurst fits very well with the content of history. One way to make history more engaging that I will use in my classroom is presenting it in terms of stories and this technology fits perfectly with that theory by encouraging students to think about history as a compilation of stories as well. Furthermore, the ability to use imported images as backgrounds to each page and for people in the story allows students to express geographic context, relationships between characters, and symbolic ideas visually, benefiting those students who are best at illustrating their knowledge in visual ways or through storytelling.

Since it might only be beneficial for certain students who express themselves well in the format of a story or latch on to the appeal of the connection to their childhood, I would use this as one possible option for students to use for a presentation assessment, along with other possibilities such as a Prezi, a speech, or a song. Although I think it is very useful that ZooBurst allows storytellers to associate a speech blurb with each character on each page, which has the added bonus of getting students to think from the perspective of a historical figure, the blurbs make each page of the story look rather crowded, often obscuring background pictures and disrupting symmetry or aesthetics. This is not the best technological tool for artistic perfectionists in my future classroom because it is designed for younger students who may not worry as much about how cleanly presented each of the pages are. However, the advantage of this is that it is very straightforward to use. Unlike Prezi or Google Earth, there was no learning curve for me with ZooBurst as I was immediately able to jump in and use all of the tools to import, move, and resize pictures. The only other disadvantage I noticed is that the free version limits users to ten page stories. However, that is not necessarily a bad thing because one important thing for history teachers to teach their students is how to determine and emphasize the main points in any historical narratives.

controversial political issues and the creation of legitimate knowledge in social studies classrooms

This blog post is actually an assignment for my TE class so I apologize in advance for its lengthiness, but hopefully anyone who is interested in the topic will still find it as useful as my briefer, spontaneous posts. The assignment is an ethnography about my placement school based around research about a particular topic. My topic was how a classroom community comes to conclusions about what is legitimate knowledge when dealing with controversial political issues. I conducted my research through two interviews, one with my mentor teacher, who teaches economics and one with another social studies teacher at the school who teaches government, and through continued observation of lessons and comments related to controversial issues in my classroom. I conducted this research because I have a strong belief that all students’ opinions about controversial issues should be treated as legitimate and I wanted to see how the teacher’s bias affects what is viewed as correct knowledge in the classroom.

            One general strategy that both teachers I interviewed agreed upon was that it is crucial for a teacher to present both sides of the story when dealing with controversial issues. The other teacher even went so far as to say that his “job is giving both sides of the argument.” This, along with my mentor’s argument that what a teacher personally thinks is completely irrelevant to how they should approach these issues because communicating each perspective takes precedence, indicates an agreement that an important role of a social studies teacher is assuring that students gain knowledge about conservative and liberal viewpoints as two reasonable theories and explanations. When I asked them about the counterargument that teachers should be more genuine to who they are instead of hiding it in the classroom, both of them strongly opposed that idea, with the other teacher saying that it is not his job to be genuine about his beliefs and my mentor arguing that doing so would make the classroom about the teacher, like many college lecture halls, instead of being about the students and their learning. One example of a lesson I observed that illustrates this consensus is a lecture my mentor did about classical and Keynesian economics. Despite her personal preference for the Keynesian side, she presented a chart on the board with the basic ideas of the economic theories and pros and cons for each. Then, she asked the students to write a paragraph stating which side they agree more with, using evidence from the lecture to argue for their perspective. Although it was still somewhat clear that she preferred the Keynesian approach due to her tendency to present the classical side first and then critique it using Keynesian arguments, implying that the former is somewhat of a logical improvement on the latter, this was a good example of sticking to an unbiased representation of both sides, which the teachers agreed was absolutely essential as a social studies teacher.

            Another area I asked about in the interview was the importance each teacher attached to teaching controversial issues. Both mentioned the fact that the trimester schedule at the high school limits how much they can cover such issues because they only have the students for one trimester, which seems shorter than a whole semester. This implies that they do think there is a value to getting students engaged with controversial issues, but my mentor teacher also said that she wants to ensure that students gain enough background knowledge on the issue to have informed opinions. Given time constraints, she thinks it is better to cover a few issues with enough depth to provide an accurate picture and allow students to develop their own perspective with factual, logical arguments than to simply bring up a lot of issues and allow students to leave her classrooms with arguments and opinions that are still unfounded. I think this way of looking at controversial issues can be beneficial, as in the lesson on Keynesian and classical economics, because it ensures that students know more about how to form arguments to support their ideas and also more about other perspectives on the issue, but can also have drawbacks because it runs on the assumption that current political issues are not at the core of the social studies curriculum, despite the fact that such issues are the most common way students will engage informally in the political discourse of our country. I would treat the training of my students to have opinions and meaningful, accurate evidence on pressing political topics as more of a cornerstone of my job as a social studies teacher.

            In contrast to this mindset, the way the other social studies teacher approaches when to incorporate controversial issues into the classroom is through “teachable moments.” Since he thinks that hot button issues will come up in the classroom whether the teacher plans for them to be part of the lesson or not, he believes that a teacher should use moments when they spontaneously appear as opportunities to have students learn something about those issues. My mentor has also used this terminology when talking to me, so it seems to be a prevalent school of thought. Although I agree that it is beneficial to teach based on what your students show interest in, I think there are other, more formal ways to gauge what political issues they value and if an issue is so important that students will definitely bring it up, like the other teacher suggests about universal health care, it would not be a waste of class time to plan a lesson on that issue or a way to incorporate it into other activities.

Furthermore, the way these “teachable moments” occur in my mentor’s classroom indicate that using that strategy does not correlate easily with providing legitimacy to all students’ opinions. She said in the interview that she only teaches about controversial issues “as much as she dares” because she knows she has a strong liberal bias and does not want to stir up too much controversy if a student distorts what she says and the wrong parent hears it. Therefore, in order to combat and control her bias, she focuses on presenting both sides, as in the lesson above, but also uses teachable moments in lieu of planning additional formal politically charged lessons that could creep closer to the realm of indoctrination. The fact that these moments sometimes occur between her and an individual student as opposed to in front of the whole class definitely protects her from appearing more biased, but they also prevent her from putting a filter on her opinions that would allow for students’ voices to be expressed and treated as legitimate knowledge. For example, many of these moments have occurred when students have made statements about President Obama’s handling of the economy that I would agree are unsupported generalizations, such as how he is destroying our country with a huge deficit and how he wants to raise everyone’s taxes. However, instead of using these moments as opportunities to show the students how to refine their perspective into statements that are more accurate and well supported, like telling the student that actually he only wanted to let the Bush tax cuts expire for people with higher levels of income but that could have detrimental effects on investment and economic growth, which would give the student’s own opinion legitimacy while also making them more politically informed, she takes them as chances to prove her students wrong, immediately jumping to reasons why what they said was wrong, just as any liberal naturally would when faced with a poorly formed, generalized conservative argument. In response to this, I have seen some students shut down from the classroom, distressed by the fact that their teacher had just told them they were wrong. It is important for teachers to remember that students’ political opinions, especially the cultural contexts, family relationships, and personal experiences behind them, are a personal part of who they are and should not be treated as worthless but rather made stronger through more accurate supporting evidence and an understanding of the challenges from the other side.

Before collecting data for this project, I believed that a teacher should make every effort to keep their own political opinions secret from their students in order to not influence them one way or the other. In his interview, the other teacher agreed with this goal, saying that he likes when the students do not know his beliefs and are always trying to figure out exactly what he thinks. I tried to hide my pleasure as un unbiased researcher, but it was a struggle to not express how glad I was to hear that someone shared my same ideal of being politically secretive as a teacher. However, I have discovered in my experiences in her classroom that my mentor teacher has the more accurate interpretation of how much a teacher’s bias can be limited in the classroom. In her interview, she said that even if teachers make the correct decision to present both sides of an issue, their bias will still show up in the way they present it. She thinks that there is no point trying to cover it up because it is virtually impossible to do so and because attempting to makes the teacher the center of attention as students try to discover what his or her beliefs are. Instead of choosing that path, she advocates making the focus of the class learning about the two sides of the story so that students will know which side she supports but it will not be controversial because she will make it clear that there are two legitimate options that both have supporters and valid arguments.

For example, when she did a lesson on one of the most controversial and pertinent topics today, health care, she presented a hypothetical scenario about how Sparrow Hospital pays for broken elbows for people with good insurance, elderly people on Medicare, workers without insurance, and the homeless to illustrate how the pre-Obama health care system works and then asked the class about any ideas to improve this situation. When no students responded, she asked me what I thought. I knew that she wanted the punch line of the lesson to be how universal health care might actually be more efficient and I agreed with that conclusion, but I got really uncomfortable because I did not want to be the one saying such a politically charged statement in front of the class. I hesitated and then said that the government providing everyone health care might help solve the problem. She responded in fake disbelief, questioning if I really meant universal health care like in Europe and I begrudgingly affirmed that was what I meant. This was all brilliantly devised on her part because she successfully made one of the most controversial things she could present in the classroom as a true statement not about her, but rather about me. I even talked to one student in the class who I knew was very conservative after the lesson, asking him about what he thought about the political nature of the lesson. He shrugged and told me that she had made me say the worst part so that she would not have to. She had successfully communicated a strong argument in favor of her bias while still keeping the lesson centered on the details of the problem and the solution in lieu of a focus on her own beliefs. Although I still think this lesson was way too biased because she basically presented one side as the only legitimate solution, it does illustrate how a good teacher can make a lesson about the content not his or her own bias, despite the presence of a strong bias.

I initially considered not making an effort to disguise her personal opinions a mistake because her bias was clear in all of her lessons and that might be seen by students as indicating that the liberal perspective is more accepted in her classroom. However, after some reflection on the formally planned lessons and informal work I have done with students in the classroom, I have realized that social studies is so completely defined by bias and subjectivity that I cannot hope to make all my biases secret. I may be able to hide my opinion on something as openly controversial as abortion, but in a subject such as history, everything from the content I emphasize to the additional perspectives I want to incorporate into my teaching to the sources I have my students analyze has a subtle bias about what I consider important in history and how I want my students to view history. For example, a short lesson my mentor asked me to help with was about the differences between the Netherlands and Spain in the sixteenth century. The students were analyzing two paintings, one from each country, to determine what each nation valued, and, when helping them think about their ideas, I could not avoid implying that the democratic values of religious toleration and appreciation for the middle class present in the Netherlands were somehow better than the divine right of kings and Inquisition of non-Catholics valued in Spain, showing some bias in my interpretation of history.

 This unavoidable bias is also evident in the various historical perspectives teachers choose to present to their students. In seminar, we did an activity where we were asked to describe a scene from an Indiana Jones movie from the perspectives of different people in the scene, including groups that whose viewpoints are underrepresented in the historical record such as women, people of non-European ethnicity, and people of lower classes who were illiterate . The point of this activity was to highlight that their perspectives on historical events are often ignored in historical study and classes because, in the words of the author of the lesson, “written, white, and Western modes of recording history are privileged.”[1] I would love to use activities along the lines of this in my classroom, but it definitely has political undertones because discussing the ideas of disproportionate power between social groups in history or the present correlates with being more liberal politically, especially due to associations of revisionist history with efforts to undermine current forms of inequality that privilege white, high SES, heterosexual men. To put it simply, since social studies is almost always subjective it is unwise for a teacher to honestly attempt to hide all possible bias because some will always seep through.

My research also shows that teachers may have some biases that they are not even aware of. One of my interview questions asked the two teachers to describe their own political beliefs and another question asked them to describe the political beliefs of the town where my school is located. My mentor teacher, who said she was very liberal, described the town as an even split between liberal and conservative, but the other teacher, who described himself as moderate, said the community was very conservative. These two varying perspectives on the town cannot both be correct so there must be an explanation for the divergence. I think the most logical one is that the other teacher has an inaccurate interpretation of his own political beliefs. Since my mentor teacher is clearly on the far left side of the political spectrum, she has the perspective necessary to accurately evaluate the people in the community purely based on how much they agree with her, from those who are in concordance with her on almost everything to those who are in complete opposition. However, the other teacher may have come up with a different idea on the community’s political beliefs because he is not as moderate as he says he is. He did say in other questions that he voted for Obama and tends to vote for Democrats, so he may be more liberal than he thinks he is. This would explain the difference between the two teachers’ answers because the government teacher, wrongly thinking that he is in the middle of the political spectrum and noticing that the majority of the town is to the right of him, would then conclude that the town is very conservative. This shows that we as teachers need to remember that we may have biases that we are not even aware of because our perceptions of ourselves are not completely accurate. Therefore, when we are planning lessons, we have to admit to ourselves that there are biases that influence our teaching which we cannot even account for or plan to hide.

However, this research has also shown me that when teachers have strong political opinions, it is still worth it to make a truly honest effort to always remain unbiased because the subjectivity of social studies needs to mean that teachers communicate to their students that none of their political opinions are objectively wrong. Despite her emphasis in the interview on the importance of presenting both sides, I have seen many examples where she has unfortunately allowed her strong political opinions to impact the way she views and reacts to students she disagrees with. As I have already mentioned, her responses to teachable moments often communicate to students that their teacher thinks their opinions are completely wrong and do not count as valid political knowledge. Furthermore, during the lesson on the American health care system she did include in her lecture reasons why certain people should legitimately disagree with universal health care because they lose from its implementation, but when a few students challenged her conclusion with some of the common conservative arguments against Obama’s health care legislation, she did not waver from the conclusion that universal health care is overall the best system for the good of the whole country. She simply treated the student’s questions like she would statements from any conservative who disagreed with her in conversation, by arguing why those opinions and points were wrong. In this case, she permitted her own strong beliefs to interfere with her role as a teacher of maximizing student learning. Instead, it would have been better to respond to their questions by adding additional explanations and evidence that would support the conservative students’ perspective. This would serve the dual purpose of maintaining student motivation and interest in political issues by treating both sides as legitimate knowledge and improving those students’ skills for political engagement by showing them how to improve their own arguments in addition to giving them a full understanding of the other side of the issue.

She also made a few other comments during the interview that illustrate how her strong biases may have a detrimental effect on her teaching. After describing that Williamston was an even split politically, she said that the division was determined by one factor, with those who read being on the liberal side and those who do not being more conservative. Although this may have some truth to it, as many stereotypes do, this statement indicates a serious danger of forming expectations about her students that could impact her relationships with students and her teaching, specifically the expectation that conservatism and intelligence have a negative correlation. This would then make it even more likely that conservative arguments would not be treated as legitimate knowledge in her classroom because they are assumed to be intellectually inferior. Similarly, she gave one example when discussing how she thinks students lack knowledge about the historical background of political issues. That example was Roe vs. Wade and she said that students were generally unaware of the dangerous back alley abortions that had occurred when abortion was illegal. This again indicates a tendency for her to view some conservative opinions voiced by her students as objectively incorrect and uninformed, a message that likely is sent to her students on some occasions. In order to maintain a classroom environment that honors all student contributions to political discussions as valid, with a few extreme exceptions, teachers really need to make an effort to prevent their own strongest political opinions from influencing how they treat student voices that may speak out against those staunchly held beliefs. It is not a teacher’s job to change any student’s political opinions, but rather to assure that all students learn something more about both sides and to equip students with the tools to be informed, politically active citizens.

---

[1] DeWitt, Scott W. The Nature of Evidence and Interpretation in History. 121.

Is this really feasible?

Another article I found on Twitter talks about Maine's recent requirement that every student in their schools will be given a laptop. First of all, as the article mentions, there has been some backlash against such drastic change because teachers do not want to completely change how their classrooms work. I think that those with the admirable goal of incorporating more technology into all teachers' lessons need to take it more slowly with some teachers and show them how to use technology in smaller pieces. However, having that much technology in front of every single student does open up a world of possibilities where new pedagogical possibilities are discovered in each and every classroom. It allows teachers to be inventive and open minded about trying new ways of using technology in lessons because they never have to worry about the limits of when the computer lab is available. Overall, however, I think this may be too expensive for the benefits. There is a diminishing marginal return to technology just like any other good and training teachers to use a more financially feasible amount of technology in creative ways that engage students and allows the students the opportunity to use the technology as well is a better option than just getting as much technology as possible and hoping it will improve education. Sometimes it is important to think about the economics of decisions, to worry a little bit about the Benjamins.

Original Image: "Money!"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yomanimus/102798907/sizes/s/in/photostream/
by: yomanimus

Released under an Attribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

reevaluating class size

I found a very interesting article from Twitter that has a lot of relevance for the educational funding debates that are happening right now in Michigan and around the country. An education columnist argues that the detrimental effects of classroom size are overblown and my in fact not exist at all. First off, he says that those debating about improving education overemphasize the effects of larger class sizes when the real problem is the mediocre teachers in some classrooms. Furthermore, he says that the only way smaller classes significantly improve student learning is when they are half the size of a normal classroom and the students are at risk students. For most other students, even slightly larger than normal classrooms do not negatively impact their learning. I have heard all the horror stories about 60 kids in a classroom in Detroit but I tend to agree with this analysis. Good teachers are able to use group work and effective classroom management to help a large group of students learn from everyone else in the room. When students are motivated and provided with engaging, differentiated lessons, the class size is almost irrelevant because the students will be following along and learning through the activities even if there are a few more of them. The only time smaller classes would help is when students have issues at home that might affect their attention or motivation at school, especially when those students' behavior is a distraction to their peers. These students need regular attention from teachers and they will not get that by simply decreasing class size from 32 to 28 so I can really see how a significantly smaller class could really help a teacher reach such students. When some of those students are worrying about where dinner is coming from, a crowded classroom can probably feel like this:

Original Image: "Crowd"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamescridland/613445810/sizes/s/in/photostream/
by: James Cridland

Released under an Attribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

smart boards

At my placement at Williamston High school, all of the teachers have smartboards in their rooms. However, my mentor teacher rarely uses it but she still knows more about how to use them than I do. I had never even seen how one works before and was stunned when I saw her tap a link on a webpage on the smartboard and then saw the browser navigate to that website. I have never had a touchscreen phone so that may also be one reason that this concept was so new to me. However, once I learned more about how to use them in my TE class, I realized how useful they can really be. They basically make the board and standard projectors obsolete. Why ever bother to have your students write on the board when they can write on the smartboard and you can save their conclusions on your computer? It combines the flexibility of writing on the board, being able to underline, circle, or draw lines, with the ability to bring a prepared powerpoint with the outline of the lecture or activity. Plus, it allows the teacher to use any online resources in a more active way. Instead of having to sit or stand behind their computer, the teacher can move around by the smartboard and have students easily interact with the Internet in a way which allows all students to see what is going on. After contemplating all these benefits, if I am lucky enough to be in a classroom with a smartboard, I would use it on a daily basis for lectures, student presentations, and activities. I would actually use it for pretty much everything in the classroom because it is the ideal combination of ease of preparation of lessons and the ability to adapt and be flexible and easily save results during class. Plus, the more I use it I will only discover all the other useful things it can do and will become even more adept at harnessing its technological power for my students' learning.

Original Image: New SmartBoard 010
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lisathumann/2984541404/sizes/s/in/photostream/
by: LisaThumann

Released under an Attribution-Share Alike License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

lesson plan thoughts

For my integrated technology lesson plan, I am thinking of using Google Earth to teach about the geography of Civil War battles. Battles are often taught by presenting the two sides and then saying who won, and maybe talking about some of the weapons or tactics that they used. However, I want my students to think about battles from a historically analytical perspective and geography plays a huge part in that. The locations of hills, rivers, streams, forested areas, and fields can all affect how and why a battle played out the way it did. Luckily, physical geography has not changed that much in the last 150 years so the students can do this analysis in a hands on way with Google Earth. Google Earth works perfectly because I can direct students to turn off the human layers of geography and just look at the physical geography of their particular battle. Students can work in groups on different battles, using Google Earth to come up with theories about why the battle occurred there, why the Union or Confederate troops moved in a particular way, and why one side ended up winning. One misconception this might help clarify is the idea that all Civil War battles were the same, with both sides lining up, one side charging, and the other side firing back on them. In fact, each battle was unique in its outcome and this often had a lot to do with the geography of the battlefield, which students will be able to see on Google Earth. They will get involved with the Civil War without having to look like this guy:

Original Image: "Civil War 1"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/frankpierson/4472742319/sizes/s/in/photostream/
by: frankpierson

Released under an Attribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Prezis are awesome!

Here is my digital story that I would use to introduce a lesson in a US history class:

CEP 416 Storyboard on Prezi

 I would use this prezi as a hook for a lesson on The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and the resulting food safety regulations. I would follow it by having students read and analyze excerpts from The Jungle. I think it serves as a good hook because of its "wow" factor. I know that when I first saw a prezi as part of a class presentation it wowed me and I hope that this would do the same for my students. Also, this prezi allows me to use single words and images, along with the order of their presentation, to add an extra creative, emotional element to the story that would hopefully get students thinking about how Sinclair's experience of writing the book and seeing its aftermath. In addition to using it as a hook for my own lesson, I would definitely provide a prezi as an option for a summative project at the end of the unit in which the students would be asked to create a presentation on one of the important figures in the Progressive Movement of the start of the 20th century. Hopefully my use of the prezi earlier in the unit would encourage some students to try it as a more creative presentation mode. I may even make a thematic circle and use other presentation technologies throughout the unit and then let my students choose from all of the options that I had demonstrated for them.

One thing I loved about prezi is how straightforward it was to use because I was intimidated by it when I saw it being used by other students in my classes. I thought all of those zooms and rotations would have some type of programming that was required to make it look cool. Lo and behold, all you have to do is mark out the order that you want the elements to be presented in and the program takes care of the cool transitions all by itself. As I already mentioned, I also love how it is such an easy way to incorporate creativity into a technology-driven presentation by having hidden messages or literally having the form follow the function, as in when I put the words "no room to move" squished inside the letter O so the words themselves had no room to move. As for drawbacks, I could not figure out how to put music with the presentation and I really wished I could have done that because it would capture student's attention better and add to the impact. Furthermore, I think it might be difficult for students to find a way to make a story flow well with a prezi because they need to find just the right words and order to allow for both impact and clarity of what they are trying to say. A more direct presentation style would be easier for students to make sure they got the main points across.

Google Earth!

With teaching history in mind, the second I saw Google Earth as one of the possible technologies to explore I got excited thinking about how I would use it in my classroom. The first thing I thought of in terms of technological content knowledge (TCK) was how geography was removed from the required social studies classes in Michigan and instead expected to be taught as part of history classes. Google Earth and geography go hand in hand because it is completely full of geographical information, especially on land use patterns such as where humans have settled in cities, where residential, commercial, and industrial zoning occurs, and what land has been cultivated for farming and topography of geographical regions, showing mountains, forests, deserts, rivers, and other bodies of water. These features of physical geography also play a large role in world history with wars, migrations, and entire civilizations being shaped by the location of rivers, mountain ranges, deserts, and bodies of water.

In terms of technological pedagogical knowledge, one thing I thought about was the role of discovery in learning about social studies. Google Earth gives each student the power to play around with maps and discover answers to geographical and historical questions on their own. It would be easy for any type of project or activity based around Google Earth to genuinely allow students ownership over their own learning. They get to be the ones literally looking at the topological features and human settlement patterns instead of having someone tell them about the geography or reading about it. They get to assume the role of geographer and historian themselves. The only drawback to this that I noticed is that navigating around on Google Earth can be tricky and annoying because it can be difficult to control how and when it zooms or moves locations.

The technological pedagogical content knowledge that would bring this all together is exemplified by any history lesson about the role of geography as a force shaping history based around an inquiry model of students coming up with theories about historical events and then looking at the geography of those areas on Google Earth to test that theory. For example, I could do a world history lesson about the rise of ancient civilizations that gives students their location and asks them to use Google Earth to try and figure out why those civilizations occurred in those particular locations. Furthermore, I could also do a US History lesson about the role of geography in famous battles such as Gettysburg, D-Day, or the British attack on Fort McHenry that inspired the Star Spangled Banner, all of which were heavily influenced by the local geography. Such a lesson might also ask students to come up with their own theories about how the geography might have affected the outcome by looking at maps on Google Earth. Finally, I could ask students to connect these conclusions from either lesson to something about geography in their local area that might affect where people in their community live.

Here is an example of an image from Google Earth that shows the themes of settlement based on geography which could be used as a hook for discussion of human migration and the origins of various civilizations:

Original Image: Wajima Aerial View (Google Earth)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kahtava/143086596/sizes/s/in/photostream/
by: Steph & Adam

Release under an Attribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

learning from Twitter

I have already posted previously about some of the potentials and issues I saw with Twitter. However, since then, I have become more engaged with the potentials of a PLN on Twitter because I have had Tweet Deck installed and open on my computer for a while now. I even find myself checking it to look for new updates and blog posts because I have found so many interesting ideas about teaching just from clicking on tweeted links. I honestly just selected some groups and individuals to follow based on their general topics seeming interesting to me, but I have already encountered a lot of useful stuff that I can't resist reading. Even the length of a Tweet contributes to its attractive power. It is just long enough that a well-formulated tweet will pique my interest, but just short enough that it will leave me wanting to follow the link to learn more. It is nice to have an online "temptation" that, unlike my Facebook or sports blog interests, is actually contributing to my professional development and I don't have to view as a waste of time.

For example, I just found this article about passing rates of AP tests. The section that most interested me discusses how minority students, especially African Americans, have significantly lower passing rates than other students, arguing that the reason for this discrepancy is a lack of preparation to take AP classes. This interested me because I hope that schools can become a place that battles against social inequality instead of perpetuating it and this seems to indicate otherwise. However, I also think it misses the possible interpretation that there is a disadvantage built into being formally graded on writing when the expected standard is white not African American vernacular. Sure it is important for all students to learn proper "standard English," but the extra difficulty for minority students who don't speak as close to that vernacular at home could partially explain why they don't seem as prepared when they enter an AP class. They would have had to do more work and learned more in school than a white student in order to only be at the same competency level of writing standard English.

While I'm on the topic, here is a creative commons picture originally completed unrelated to education that I think speaks ironically to the possibility of tests putting students within a box that harshly, coldly delineates their knowledge level and capabilities:

Original Image: "test"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sidelong/246816211/sizes/s/in/photostream/
by: DaveBleasdale

Released under an Attribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

Photoshop Slide Show

dangerous copyright

What I have noticed from my experience is that when students need an image for any project or presentation in class, they go straight to Google. I did it myself in high school and college classes, searching for an image, copying the first one I liked, pasting it into my project, and not even thinking once about whether I might be doing something illegal. Teachers did not even suggest that all those images were under copyright and students all fell into the same assumption that there were no restrictions on taking whatever we wanted off the internet. Since student projects do not often create large commercial or social waves, ignoring copyright law did not become a significant issue. However, in my classroom I hope students will create projects that are not only extensive and professionally done but also are related to events in our world, country, or community. This means that their projects may be more visible to the world outside of our classroom and that is where copyright issues could arise. As teachers we are responsible for what students do in our classes and therefore someone discovering an improper use of copyrighted material by one of our students could be disastrous. To combat this, I will definitely show students how to search for creative commons licensed material and use and reference it correctly. I'm glad we learned about this possible issue and a simple, legal way to get around it. I would not want to end up here simply due to ignorance:

Original Image: "jail"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/guillermo_solar/493353121/sizes/s/in/photostream/
by: the_kid_cl

Released under an Attribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

historical images

Images can be an extremely useful tool in a history classroom. Whether they are paintings, photographs, or political cartoons, they can serve as primary sources for inquiry or analysis, hooks for a lesson, or centerpieces of discussion. They help students experience how historical understanding can come from something other than the written word, engage visual learners, and teach students analytical skills that will reflect well on their future political and cultural literacy. Simply being able to understand a political cartoon or have an interpretive opinion on the significance of a photograph is a tool that will help students be more politically engaged and demonstrate a key analytical skill to employers. In my classroom I will use images regularly and ask students to think about them to form their own hypothesis and interpretations. For example, when I teach students about 9/11 I would incorporate analysis of the following image:

Photo Attribution:

Original Image: "WTC 9/11"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/slagheap/132113924/sizes/s/in/set-72057594112589148/
By: slagheap

Released under an Attribution Non-Commercial-Share Alike License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

This is a photo I licensed with creative commons. It is of Chewy, my fiancee's shitzu-pug mix. He is adorable:

Photo Attribution:

Original Image: "Chewy!"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59322699@N04/5431878924/
By: andyv24

Released under an Attribution Non-Commercial  License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

middle ground?

One thing I have noticed while looking around for social bookmarks, people to follow on twitter, and blogs to follow on delicious is that there are a lot of people who are very passionate about the power of technology in education, who focus their research and their lives on inventing new ways to incorporate it into the classroom, making existent strategies more effective, and communicating about technology to teachers who can put it into use. On the other hand, I know from my experiences in school placements at MSU and as a student that many teachers are adverse to having lots of technology use in their classroom and see only the embarrassing intimidation from a projector they can't seem to get to work just right instead of the endless possibilities. (I have a personal such fear about printers.) Sure there are teachers ready, willing, and excited to hear about a new online classroom tool, but there may be just as many who would view it as invasive on their own teaching style or complain about having to learn about something useless they would never actually try. The real problem, then, is how to bridge the gap between the huge potential for technology in the classroom and its opponents, mostly silent teachers who simply are too intimidated or stuck in their ways, depending on your perspective.

I think the answer to this question lies in simplicity. Yes we cannot even imagine the huge role online learning will play in education in 20, 10. even 5 years, but education technology experts should remember that teachers who are less comfortable with technology need to be fed it in small bytes (sorry for the pun). Providing one useful example of an online resource that really appeals to a specific teacher and their lesson plans may be way more useful than an entire professional development about technology. It may be the key to allowing all students the learning opportunities afforded by technology by encouraging teachers to find some aspect of technology that fits their style, not pressuring them into making drastic changes in the direction of online education.