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).

Aztec Schools: The Tēlpochcalli and the Calmecac

So now you've checked out the education options of the Aztec empire (Calmecac & Telpochcalli). If you were living there then, what school would you go to, and what would you study?

If you didn't turn in your annotated article, "Picture Yourself as a Stereotypical Male," please bring it to me in class on Friday.

In Friday's class, we will prepare for our Call to Action Day adventure at Twin Pines Senior Center. We will also be exploring the topic of Neuroplasticity.

Picture Yourself as a Stereotypical Male

For Friday's class, please read carefully the article I distributed, "Picture Yourself as a Stereotypical Male," and make purposeful annotations to it. You can also find the article on-line (with explorable links to the research discussed).

Bring your written answers to the following questions:

1. What are some hypotheses as to why men outperform women in a cluster of tests related to spatial ability?
2. What did the gender-priming experiment show?
3. What is "stereotype threat"?
4. Describe four of the experiments cited in the article that demonstrated the affects of stereotype threat.
5. What does the brain do in the ventral anterior cingulate cortex?
6. What social-psychological interventions can ameliorate the achievement gap? (N.B. look up words you aren't familiar with.)

If you look for the answers to these questions as you read and annotate, the task will be easier.

Welcome to Plato's Academy and the Chinese Imperial Examination System

Last week we looked at education in Greece (Athens and Sparta) and Rome. It is funny to think of the Romans as the first to drop PE and music from the schools. On Wednesday, we will visit China to explore the history of the Imperial Examination System. Please read the article found at http://www.sacu.org/examinations.html before class.

Our class research project under way. It looks like we have narrowed down our topic to the effects of technology on our brains and on learning. This topic could also include exploring best practices for students and educators. We'll talk about how to proceed from here in class on Wednesday and Friday.