I watched the Education Nation webinar that you asked us to watch (the first webinar before 21st century skills) about a week and a half ago. It brought up some very interesting points.
Education as it is now is a waste of human potential. The reason behind that reasoning was students are not able to apply to their daily lives what they learned in school. I definitely agree with this, because I was always that student who asked "why do I need to know this?"
The way that this impacts on what I teach is I will make all projects, assignments, and lesson plans rooted in real life. For instance, if I were teaching math to my students, I would give them an example problem in the real world. For instance, I would ask them to find out how much to tip the waiter or waitress if they have a $20 bill. I would tell them that the appropriate tip nowadays is 20% of the bill. They will then have to do some algebra to figure it out. This is an example of real-world algebra.
Just in case your wondering, here's how it should be solved:
X = (2) 20 x= amount tipped
(1) 20 100 (1)= amount on bill
(2)= Percent tipped
20*20=400 100= Total Percent
400/100=4 You would tip $4 on a $20 bill if you give a 20% tip.
A giant thing that I liked was the philosophy of "don't use either/or as an excuse." I embellished that a bit, but it is true none-the-less.
I will use this in my teaching by not thinking I can only teach social skills, I can teach social skills AND math. A possible example would be to play the game monopoly. It could also be discussing classism as well. The way I would do this is give one person all of the $500 bills and properties, while others get only a few dollar bills. This idea is a social game where math is in valued including a social justice issue.
Another thing was when the teacher said that in other countries, they focus on rote memorization all year long. So when it comes to testing, they far surpass us. Later on in this journal, I will focus on this issue.
Making the classroom more globular is very important. It will help the students to get past their egocentrism (which we all have), and see other cultures.
https://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/miner.html
There is a key article that I would use to start this part of my curriculum. It is a anthropological article on a a culture called the Nacirema in the Americas. The article really makes the reader think that that culture is really screwed up. At the end of the article, it asks a bunch of questions. The final question is "What is Nacirema spelled backwards?" I will let you figure that out!
They talked a lot about the technology edge with education. I think that they are correct that every student should get a laptop. They say that laptops only cost $250 per year, the same as textbooks.
I really liked how Anthony taught his students to become historians themselves and the ways that he did that. Through creating a wiki page for his classroom, and giving his students the tools to succeed, and fail.
My second to last point that I got from that video was "Technology is the woo part, the aah part is the tying the woo into the learning." That really shocked me at how simple that is, but so underused.
The final part that I got out of the webinar was adapting technology into a learning tool. This is key, because 3rd graders have smart phones now. Why attack smart phones when you can adapt them to be used for educational uses?
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