Outdoor Education

This weekend I ran the Seattle half marathon.  It was great; I love to run past people that have collapsed on the side of the road.  It makes me feel like such an amazing athlete.  After the race, my friend from Baltimore met me at the race recovery area.  She told me that when she was in high school, her outdoor education teacher forced all the students to run a half marathon.  On one of the class field trips they went hiking, and camping.  At the end of the camping trip they had to run 13.1 miles to get to the bus in order to return home. wtF (that’s with a capital F). Forcing adolescents, or anyone for that matter to run a half marathon is against their rights. I like running now, but angry-teenage-Crystal would have objected to this sort of outdoor education shenanigans.

Friday Nov. 27th Class - Outdoor Env. Ed.

As planned, we will be engaging in a session on the merits of teaching in the outdoors, or incorporating 'nature' in a cross curricular capacity within your teaching areas.
We will NOT be meeting in MacD103
Please meet at the entrance to Mystic Vale off of Parking Lot 1 at 8:30am sharp. (if you arrive late - follow the path down into the ravine - we'll be there).
Directions:
Parking lot 1 is the first lot on your right hand side after University Dr., it has the Glover Greenhouse Facility at the front, and is across from the Wright bldg. We'll meet in the far right corner of the lot (when facing the lot with back to ring road), where it meets the trailhead.
visit - http://www.uvic.ca/maps/3dmap.html for a map
Instructions:
- please bring with you something to write on and something to write with.
- please dress for the weather, and wear proper footwear for a light hike, some stairs, but all on trail.

See you then,
Chris

Gender

Today an important topic was brought up- GENDER. It got me thinking…how influential are gender stereotypes on students?

What are your experiences?

In general, how do you think gender influences teaching, the curriculum, and the lives of the teachers and students in the classroom?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Social Game Theory as a Teaching Lesson

Social Game Theory as a Teaching Method
by Kelly, Moss and Dale

Incorporating games into teaching can be a double edged sword. On the one hand, students respond well to such activities, but on the other, games can very easily become trivial reductions which lack substantive learning. This exercise will illustrate how the use of a social game can be used to heighten a lesson.

In this lesson about McCarthyism, the 'Mafia Game' played out by the students recreates the environment of paranoia, suspicion and baseless accusations that real people lived through in the 1950's. The side diagram illustrates how the method (playing the game) contributes to the content and objectives of the lesson.

Games can be meaningful use of class time with a little planning. In fact as long as it suits the lesson and C.O.M.A (Content, Method, Objectives, Assessment) works well, games can be fantastic learning devices!

Ps. I see the diagram is quite small on the actual blog. If anyone would like to see the full-sized original, please email me at dplotzki@uvic.ca

E-Portfolio Idea Sharing Fest

Hi!

So our next three e-portfolio entries aren't exactly looming yet, but lots of other assignments are and I was thinking lets share ideas of how we can use our assignments as e-portfolio artifacts. Maybe it's killing two birds with one stone, but I think it is also good to reflect on these assignments rather than the old undergrad style of get it finished, hand it in, forget about it.
Everyone with me? Awesome.
Our 401 papers for example. Those took a lot of research, thought and effort. Mine was on Emotional Competency education so I'm thinking of using it under K3 (knowledge of child development and contextual influences).
Any other ideas??

Happy Monday/401 Studying,
Justine

The Educational Lessons of Star Trek

Don't worry: girls can read this post, too.

Did anybody see the new Star Trek movie? It was good, even if you don't like Star Trek. And did anybody else notice that the Vulcans totally use Skinner teaching machines? That's right, those little holes in the floor are the perfect condition for the little pointy-eared children to receive the undivided attention of their virtual instructors. They learn without distraction, are quizzed verbally, and we can presume that the content is paced to match each student's needs and strengths.
And clearly it works, too, because Vulcans are freakin' smart.

However, look at their social skills! Useless when it comes to people, zero emotional competency, no charisma. Just look at how they deal with other people, how they avoid conflict until it explodes out. Poor little Spock, being teased about his mother and then beating that older kid up. This is not a well run institution!

The problem is that Vulcan schools are all academically oriented. There’s that real push to achieve in grades, to get your diploma, and to go out to the Vulcan science league or Starfleet academy or something. Actually no, not Starfleet. That’s kinda’ the Vulcan equivalent of community college. Anyway, there’s no time spent in communal classrooms learning from other students and engaging in nourishing social contact. I bet they don’t have any sports teams either.



I’m… really sick right now. Just bear with me.

Projects that challenge your students

Hi everyone, I hope that you are enjoying your reading break so far.

I randomly came across a great article in The Province online. The article is about an art project done in a Langley grade 11 art class. The class painted portraits of each Canadian soldier who had died

in Afghanistan since last Remembrance Day. Students in the article discuss the impact that the project had on them. The teacher for the class also discusses his initial hesitation about doing such a controversial project and how he chose to not get in to the political debate about Canadian troops in Afghanistan and instead focussed on the fallen soldier's lives. The article can be found here.

I found this article really tied in to many topics we have been discussing in class. This teacher used a potentially controversial topic to inspire his students. This project succeeded in large part to how he framed the project. He also made a connection between the art in the classroom and real world issues. From this article the responses seemed to be overwhelmingly positive. I think this is a really interesting example of a teacher taking a risk and really enriching the education and lives of his students.

Any thoughts on things that this article shows? Do you think this project is a good idea? How could this topic be addressed in other subjects?

Non-Linear?

During last class one of the ideas discussed was “non-linear” learning. In the discussion we were trying to see how something could be taught in a non-linear way. The idea that all learning is linear is a strong argument. At the time, many of us could not brainstorm a good example of non-linear learning. I think linear learning is just relative to the person who is learning the subject matter. There was an example of teaching someone how to fish. What do you teach first? How to cast, how to reel it in, tie on the lure, or which species are tasty to eat. I don’t think there needs to be a specific order. Who’s to say which should be first? The same goes for teaching students about farming. I believe the students could be taught in a non-linear way. The students could be taught by many different guest speakers from the community. The guest speakers would most likely teach different subject matter, at different academic levels. Examples to be taught could be fertilizers, watering, garden tools, or nutritional value of produce. Some of the topics would overlap, but others would not “lead in” to the next topic. The students would learn “chunks” of information that eventually, overtime, would come together in one concise fluid idea. However, these “chunks” about farming would appear linear to the student. I hope this idea makes sense; I’m a little preoccupied with the puppy I’m dog sitting, dumping my tea all over this laptop.

The Cognitive Teenager

Colin brought up a good point about students' readiness for what we as teachers are ready to teach them. We rely a certain degree on the Ministry's reccommendations, IRP's, PLO's...etc., but when do we consider the 'readiness' of our particular group of students?
Consider in particular the kind of learning that we were talking about today in class, bigger picture, debate-initiating, identity re-formation type of learning.
Enjoy your reading break.
Chris

The Neutral Teacher

Just following from our discussion in class today. What is your approach to your own subjectivity in your class? How much bias (passion/emotion) is okay? What are ways that we can balance our approach to a topic that leaves the 'learning' (interpretation) to the students?

No marks off for lateness

Hello All,
This was actually brought up a while ago but I found it written in one of my books and I remembered that I meant to blog about it so here it goes! Recently in Kelowna the school board decided that no marks will be allowed to be taken off for late assignments because that is not assessing the student's learning but their organizational skills. Personally, I think organization is a big part of the learning experience and while the content of an assignment may be amazing, if it is not done on time there should be some sort of natural consequence. In the professional world lateness could result in the loss of an account/client, or the loss of a job. Is the purpose of high school to prepare students for the workforce? And if so, as educators should we be assessing all aspects of students' academic performance, lateness included? If not, is there another consequence that educators could use to reinforce the importance of handing assignments in on time?

No child left behind!

After class the other week I couldn't get it out of my head what we had discussed about the no falling policy in schools. Should we really have this policy? I understand that our goal is to get all students through school, but at what cost? Are all students ready for the next level just because we have to pass them? Wouldn't this lead to students who don't try because well really they don't have to?

This also plays into our adolescent psychology class in which we are discussing age grading. Should we clump all students together just because they are at the same grade or should we focus more on their cognitive abilities?

As a future teacher in B.C. this policy really worries me. What are your thoughts?

Student Responsibility

This came to mind a couple of nights ago when I was thinking back about our super stellar observation period. Student accountability and responsibility is something that needs to be promoted by all teachers. As i'm sure all of us will agree that as upcoming high school teachers we are all gonna be pulling for our students to keep their "stuff" in a pile with handing in assignments and coming to class on time or whatever. No student wants to be nagged at or constantly reminded that "they need to grow up and start taking responsibility for their actions" (this of course would be said in a very grown-up type of voice) that is so invasive and irritating for a young person to hear over and over. So I was considering the alternatives to promoting responsibility, work ethic, etc... in another manner. One great alternate approach that I saw on observation at SMUS was that the school has actually turned the majority of club and extra curricular program responsibility onto the students and the teachers and or volunteers play a more passive role and just are their for support. I think this was a brilliant method as it injects kids full of responsibility and they may not even see it in that sense, and I believe that this could carry over to a whole mass of other things. Ok this is getting lengthy and I doubt anyone is that interested in what I have to say but just because I love sports I have to throw this at you, athletics is another great way to develop good work ethics and discipline. Being involved in sports and committing to a team I believe is another way to discretely develop those hard work and discipline skills that will most certainly carry over into the rest of life.