Welcome to American Public School

This week we are exploring the history of American public schools. You can check out Monday's video here. I asked you to focus on the agendas and intentions of those providing or advocating public education as we have for the other education systems we have looked at this semester. Consider the importance of education for a democratic citizenry for example.

On Wednesday, we will explore the topic of Values Affirmation and do the exercise in class. You can find the Values Exercise on Moodle. Afterwards, read this article.

Friday will be reserved for Final Exam review. As in the midterm exam, you will need to be able to identify on a map the locations of the ancient schools we've visited and, in a sentence or two, describe the education system of each place and the purposes they served in their societies:

1. The Maktab & Madrasa of the Islamic World
2. The Medieval European Universities
3. The NAPOLA of Nazi Germany
4. The American Public School System

The second part of the exam will be a reflect on mission, values and engagement experiences you have had in your first semester. You can find the prompt on the class Moodle if you want to prepare your ideas in advance of the final exam.

The final exam will be held in our classroom, at 2 pm on Monday, 12/9.

If you can't find sufficient information from your class notes or linked videos, you can search for the information you need in the Wikipedia.

Welcome to the Nazi National Political Institutes of Education

Well, that was grim. Please reflect once again on the agendas of those who provide education (governments, families, communities). Whose/what agendas are at play in your education?

There will be no class meeting on Wednesday. Have a great Thanksgiving!

You have two reflections due before the end of the term: (1) write a one page reflection on your experience with the research project and conference and (2) write a one page reflection on the campus activity or event that you engaged in outside of your normal class or team life. Links to these Turnitin assignments are on the class Moodle. Due no later than Thursday, 12/12, noon.

Research Project Google Docs

MEETING TONIGHT AT 9 IN OUR CLASSROOM TO FINALIZE THE PRESENTATIONS FOR TOMORROW'S RESEARCH CONFERENCE (SJ LOUNGE AT NOON)

I have loaded your bibliography links and information into a shared Google spreadsheet. Please review the information and let me know if you find an error. If your information is missing, please check in with me ASAP. It is clear from the spreadsheet that we have three basic topics:

1. Digital Harm/Well-being NEEDS TO BE ORGANIZED INTO A SMOOTH PRESENTATION
1. Donte
2. Julie
3. Elijah xx??
4. Miwoned MOVED TO GROUP 3
5. Jason xx
6. Victor
7. Valeria NOTHING YET POSTED ON SLIDE
8. Angel
2. Online Learning THIS IS LOOKING GOOD
1. Jayleen
2. Jacky
3. Michael
4. Isai
5. Margarita xx
3. Classroom Tech NEEDS TRANSITIONS BETWEEN RELATED TOPICS
1. Ruth
2. Pamela
3. Alexis xx??
4. Miwoned (MOVED FROM GROUP 1)
4. Pending
1. Angelina

In addition, e-cheating can perhaps connect to one of the above. For class on Wednesday, please review your own sources and those of other students in your topic group. We will coordinate our research in class on Wednesday.

Research Project & Social Justice Speaker

There are two assignments due on Wednesday:

Annotated bibliography (if you don't have the prompt I handed out in class, you can download it from the Moodle). You will be looking for sources related to the topic of technology in secondary education/learning, broadly. Specific topics (and you should choose one specific topic for your bibliography) might be

• on-line classes
• tutoring apps
• ebooks
• e-note-taking
• problems of unequal access
• addiction/social isolation/physical inactivity
• web info (answers vs understanding)
• how tech changes your brain
• VR/AR
• teacher controls
• ??

 or you may choose something else that you find interesting and relevant as you are looking for sources.

In addition, please complete the assignment on "The Importance of Having a Vision" that I distributed in class. Again, if you don't have a copy of the prompt, you can download it from the Moodle. This assignment is to prepare us for the Social Justice Speaker on Wednesday, 6:00-7:30pm, in the Chapel (attendance is mandatory).

Welcome to the Maktab & Madrasa

Hope you all enjoyed your whirl-wind tour of the Maktab and Madrasa. If you didn't take good notes on where, when, and what about them, get notes from a classmate who did.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY ASSIGNMENT

On Wednedsay, we will start our research project, beginning with the Annotated Bibliography assignment. You can find the handout on the Moodle. Make sure that the instructions are clear to you and bring questions to class if they are not. The Freshman Research Conference will be held on Friday, 11/15, during class time, location TBA.

NEXT WEDNESDAY, 10/30

Fall 2019 Social Justice Speaker Series, at 6:00-7:30 p.m., in the Chapel. 

Attendance is mandatory.

The Neuroscience of Learning & Upcoming Midterm Exam

In today's class, we watched a talk on the neuroscience of learning, which you can view again on your own, hopefully with better sound quality. It occurred to me, while watching the video, that we might usefully apply some of the ideas from the talk to an area of our own learning/brains. Could we do research to learn how to learn something that would make our lives better? Please give it some thought before we begin to tackle our research project after the midterm break.

The Midterm Exam:
We will review on Monday and have the exam in class on Wednesday (Tuesday for the soccer team). To prepare, review the class blog and your notes. You will need to be able to briefly define/summarize the neurosciences concepts we have explored:

1. Growth vs. Fixed Mindset;
2. The Adolescent Brain;
3. Stereotype Threat;
4. Effects of Stress;
5. Neuro-plasticity; and
6. The Neuroscience of Education.

Strong summaries will include an example of an experiment described in the article or talk.

You will also need to be able to identify on a map the locations of the ancient schools we've visited and, in a sentence or two, describe the education system of each place and the purposes they served in their societies (what was taught and why?):

1. The Eduba of Mesopotamia
2. The Imperial Examination System of China
3. Greece (Athens and Sparta) & Rome
4. The Tēlpochcalli and the Calmecac of the Aztec Empire

Call to Action Day

I hope you who got to have lunch at the Senior Center today had as good a time as I did. I'm pretty sure the seniors had a fine time. Tomorrow in class, we will reflect on the experience and make plans for the next big thing, MIDTERMS.

Here are links to the two videos we watched in class recently:  "After watching this, your brain will not be the same" (neuroplasticity) and "Txtng is killing language. JK!!!" (texting as spoken language).