Hey Bloggers,
Here are a few discussion items you may feel the need to respond to:
1. How has the creation of your first blog been progressing? Remember that we'll be presenting our works-in-progress blogs next Wednesday during "class" (2:45 until 4:45 January 10 in Kathleen's room). What are your current frustrations or successes?
2. For some reason, I was invited to join New Blogger, which is now through Google. So, I used my Google account to make the switch and have found that New Blogger is much more sophisticated yet at the same time easier to use. There are some glitches, however. For instance, I had to be reinvited by bloggers who originally invited me to be a team member. That was annoying. For those who have made the transition, what are you thoughts?
3. Here's an interesting article from Time Magazine (How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century)that Ed brought to my attention. Maybe you've got some thoughts on the article. If so, blog away. We're listening.
8 comments:
So far, I'm loving blogging. The only frustration I've encountered is what to post to my blog.
The blogging that we have done thus far in AP Language has been minimal. There did not seem to be a huge poitive response. They seemed to feel it was just one more thing they had to do.
THe article about students needing to be able to evaluage information from a web site was not new to me. So many times students will cite sketchy info in their term papers. And quite often, differing wesites offer differing statistics - even as to the size of a desert or country. It is hard for even myself to muddle through the info.
I like the fact that I have wikispace, but sad that we don't use it much. I guess my personal goal will be to increase usage.
I have finally logged on thanks to much help from Scott. This is my first blog- so I am feeling quite proud of myself.
Read, particularly, the last sentence of this article.
I need to edit my last post. I should have referenced the Time magazine article when I suggest that we read the last sentence. Without that, you must have wondered what I was blogging about.
I'm learning that once I click "publish," that baby's gone forever. I should have reread the Time article so that I could correctly suggest that we note not just the last sentence, but the last paragraph. Just another direction we need to go in order to get kids ready.
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This was a post that I made on my library listserv regarding the Time Magazine article:
This was a recent cover story from Time magazine (December 18th). There was a reference to it last week on the list. It starts off with Rip Van Winkle waking up after his long sleep and not recognizing much of anything except for the public schools. “They’ve gone from blackboards to green boards”. According to the article, school reform will grab headlines again with the release of a report by the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce.
The points raised by the article are sounding very familiar by now:
Students need to be global citizens. They need to “think outside the box”, be creative and innovative. Their skills need to be interdisciplinary. The ability to process and evaluate information quickly is essential. There is a need for “people skills”: having emotional intelligence (EQ) is just as important as having a high IQ.
One school highlighted is the Baccalaureate School for Global Education founded by Bill Stroud in Astoria, New York. One of his classes is examining the film “Loose Change”, which gives an alternative view regarding the attacks on 9/11. “Throughout the year, the class will examine news reports, websites, propaganda, history books, blogs, even pop songs. The goal is to teach kids to be discerning consumers of information and to research, formulate and defend their own views . . .”
This is another good quote:
“Teachers need not fear that they will be made obsolete. They will, however, feel increasing pressure to bring their methods – along with the curriculum – into line with the way the modern world works. That means putting a greater emphasis on teaching kids to collaborate and solve problems in small groups and apply what they’ve learned in the real world. Besides, research shows that kids learn better that way than with the old chalk-and-talk approach.”
I’m curious to know if this is causing any amount of discussion at your school. In my personal view, I don’t see how the ideals and goals presented in the article can be achieved given the present structure of our public school system: 185 days of classes starting at 8 AM and ending at 2:30, 42 minutes periods (plus or minus) and huge gaps for vacations and the summer months. There are a number of schools in our area that have gone to block scheduling, which I feel is a step in the right direction, but there isn’t any mass movement in this direction. Our school toyed with the idea a few years ago, but it never got very far. The floor is open for discussion.
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