Bravo to everyone who blogged for the first time and thank you to all of you who blogged and offered purposeful insights into the use of technology in the classroom and examples from Willlowdale Elementary.Don't feel left out if you were not one of the "cool" kids (as Chris so aptly coined them) from the 306 course taught by Jeff Crews. We will all get plenty of practice this semester. While we are primarily using the blog as a way to build community and further develop ideas discussed in class, the blog also serves as a way to reinforce the use of technologies (Norm, I suppose we could also use it for political commentary). Levels of frustration will vary depending on prior experiences, but it will be important to remember that seat time is still the best way to become proficient. In fact, Professor Cobbs and I initiated the use of this blog just last semester as a way for us to stay current in the use of classroom technologies so it is a relatively new format for us too.
This week the UM campus will be dedicating an entire day to exploring global climate change. Living in an electronic genre can be frustrating, but moving away from a paper-dependent classroom has many environmental benefits. (This said, we acknowledge that computers bring their share of environmental hazards.)
We consider the migration of course components to an electronic course format to be an important part of our effort to engage in campus-wide efforts to address climate change and challenge you to think about how you will structure your classroom in ways that fundamentally address the issue of global climate change.
For example, an interesting class exploration could be to challenge the supposition that an electronic classroom is more environmentally sustainable than a paper-based classroom. Create a list of activities that students could pursue to answer this question.
In class this week we will be exploring the national standards for math and science and ask that your blog entry contribute to a comparative analysis of the standards. (For science, we will focus on chapter six of the NSES only: http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/nses/6a.html).
To get us started, consider the main emphasis areas for the two standards. How are they the same? How are they different? What is the central teaching strategy or strategies recommended? Are they consistent or do they conflict? Many of you noticed that the math standards do not talk about the history of math, and yet they comprise a fundamental part of the science standards? Why is this?
For this blog, unless you are the first one to comment, the expectation will be that you have read at least one other student's entry (and preferably three) and incorporated their conclusions in your response as well as end your entry with a question you still have about the math or science standards.
Next week we hope to be splitting you into your grade band learning communities. Until then, we will continue with a group blogging format.
