Vicki Davis is a Georgia computer science teacher who has emerged over the last year as a voice for utilizing aspects of the read/write web in classrooms. In December, she partnered with Julie Lindsey, a teacher at an International school in Bangladesh, to span the globe with a FlatClassroomProject wiki that was created by their students.
This wiki has just been recognized as one of the best “edublogs” of 2006.
We used a wiki in my science teaching methods class as a way for students to share knowledge and resources in preparation for teaching. I look forward to exploring what Vicki’s and Julie’s students put together in less than an month for ideas on how to use this medium effectively in future classes.
As you browse their work, what ideas do you see that teachers should use in class wikis?
This weekend, while grading some nicely done unit plans, I listened to an extremely disturbing radio show. This week’s episode of This American Life was entitled “Shouting Across the Divide” and featured tales of being Muslim in present-day America. The first story broke my heart, as it described the experiences of a young Muslim girl in an American public school classroom where the the teacher did not fulfill her responsibility establish a pluralistic learning environment and protect her students.
I did not get the impression that the teacher was inexperienced. But I think this story might be useful for new teachers to hear to remind them of the awesome power they hold in their classrooms, and in the lives of their individual students. Given the long journey in our public school toward treating all students some degree of respect, I found it unbelievable that this scenario could still happen.
I ran across this post by Chris Lehmann, a former tech coordinator and now principal of the Science Learning Academy in Philadelphia. He talks about two ideas that are probably central for a principal at a “progressive” school: Making decisions that push the envelope of traditional schooling and empowering students to deal with freedom and the responsibility afforded by new technologies.
Specifically, he tells us about his school’s response to students misusing instant messaging capability in a 1:1 computing environment. I thought this was interesting because of two conversations threads we’ve been having in our methods class: (1) we spent the last week talking about the decisions teachers make to facilitate an orderly learning environment, and (2) the challenges introduced when a teacher decides to use information technology in his or her classroom.
If you started teaching in a school where all students had laptops, how would you deal with their use of instant messaging? What do you think of Chris’s description of how the issue is being handled in their school?
The public radio show “Speaking of Faith” has devoted two episodes to Einsteins spiritual and ethical views. The podcasts as well as a significant collection of related resources can be found in the SOF Archive.
In the ethics episode, I was especially interested in S. James Gate’s discussion of Einstein’s concerns for the apparent discrepancy between our stated value of equality and our country’s treatment of African Americans. Gates, a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland, also discusses the relation between science and other creative endeavors such as the arts. I thought his comments about the role of diversity in science were illuminating, and important for science teachers to communicate to their students.
Anthony, Diana, and I saw this NYT article and thought it interesting. This article reports on NAEP test results for elementary and middle schoolers. It would be interesting to know more about the assessment items.
I ran across a Washington Post article by Jay Matthews that summarizes a history of standardized testing. Though it was interesting learn about the roots of standardized testing, the article does not delve into the influence that state-level testing plays or should play in daily instruction. To illustrate this point, there is a sidebar article by a fifth grade teacher listing the “teachable moments” she navigated during her day.
One difference between teaching a college course and teaching a high school course is the lack of continuity. Our teaching methods class meets one evening per week. This is very different from seeing students an hour each day every weekday. When you see your students everyday, you share what is going on with you and them, and as a teacher, you can relate everyday situations to what you are teaching, and maintain conversations that feed shared interests over days and weeks.
I miss these conversations because they I think they made what I was teaching more meaningful to me and my students.
I am hoping that “After the Bell” will be a place that I can share interesting things I learn about teaching during the week that might not make it into our short time together each week.
- J.
