All the World's a Stage

I couldn't resist one of the most famous quotations from As You Like It.  But, it gets me thinking.  "If all the world's a stage And all the men and women merely players," what characters are in our show and which are not?

Let me be a bit clearer.  I am beginning a self-directed research project around diversity in teaching social studies.  To go back to our Shakespeare metaphor, what characters currently populate our stage of social studies or history?  What characters are missing?  How do we start to restore some of the missing characters to textbooks and other materials?  What happens when those characters are not easily matched on to state standards?

The first step in my journey has been reading James Loewen's Teaching What Really Happened.  The first chapter has already got my wheels turning about why it is so important to reinvigorate social studies and the key role that history plays in our lives.

The second step has been collecting some resources that might destabilize traditional narratives of U.S. history.  They include:

• Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History
• Kim E. Nielsen's A Disability History of the United States
• Michael Bronski's A Queer History of the United States

Are there other recommendations you might have?

I have done a bit of online research and have not found the right resources yet.  Any recommendations in the digital world?

(P.S. - I couldn't think about missing characters in Shakespeare and not think about Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.  A great riff on what happens to the minor roles in plays.)

Open Education - "Our Doubts are Traitors"

I couldn't resist this quote from Measure for Measure.  It encapsulates my relationship toward using the open online communities.  (See the photo below of a 19th century production.)

I am afraid of making a mistake or trying to cling to my hubris that I have the 'best' solution to a problem.  David Wiley calls this overcoming your inner two year old.  He goes further to encourage us so that we can light others' candles without getting rid of our own light.  Indeed, we will become better teachers by sharing.  However, we need to be aware of seeing this as a silver bullet.  Teachers need to be able to determine how good a teaching resource is that he or she finds.  A guide for this can come from history - the printing press and its history.  Better access to information means that we need better consumers who can sort.

We also need to demand change in the way courses are offered through online communities.  Why do course management systems not work like Facebook?  Why is information no longer accessible at the end of a semester.  The answer comes from a need to protect and that it is not in a company's best interest to save information over time.  We, as educators, need to figure something out to meet demand for access to education.  We continue to have one of the best educational systems and we need to figure out how to get more people of the world access to it.

Additionally, I need to get more comfortable with sharing and openness.  When I have a lesson that I think is particularly effective, I can share it.  Others can adapt it for their classroom and impact those beyond my own classroom with my good work.  The Open Education video shows this particularly well.  Open educational resources also help to provide quality education to the world.  I think we can start adding this to our own educational networks by sharing and using resources.  Already, I am in an instructional design course this semester.  As I was planning, I Googled and found some excellent online resources for teaching the Middle East.  I found some great resources including this one from the University of Arizona and this one from the University of Chicago.  I ended up 'borrowing' a few ideas from the University of Chicago's resources.  You can even find some news magazines online with excellent teaching resources.  Once I am finished with my lesson plans, I think I will share them on this blog so others can have access.

I also think an open access classroom build assignments that encourage students to publish and interact online in a safe way.  One might consider using blogging  instead of journaling or worksheets.

I have been having conversations with my adviser about the need to reform social studies classrooms to be more inclusive.  Students need to see themselves in the past so we can build a better future.  It seems that open educational resources could help with this.  Additionally, using open educational resources help fight the consumerist model of education.  This can even lead to better ways of organizing technologies, social movements, and many other things through open thinking.  However, I wonder if the existing governmental and funding structures we have encourage this type of collaboration.  As we have a school system built around funding through local taxes, isn't what taxpayers are buying is better resources and teachers?  Is this open resource system a way of fighting that?

As we look toward the future, who knows what lies ahead?  There are a number of entirely online schools being developed to offer K-12 education.  Will this mean the death of traditional schools?  I don't think so.  I still think there is value in the face to face interactions offered by brick and mortar schools.  However, I think that we are just at the beginnings of what that revolution will bring.  I do think we will see the eventual death of the textbook.  The costs of textbooks are better spent on providing technology.  Textbooks themselves take so long to print and acquire that they are almost out of date when they arrive.  Plus, as the article indicates, using outside readings increases engagement and allows for more diverse points of view.

Le Debut

So, I am starting on our Major Project for ITA 575.  As mentioned previously, I am hoping to spend some time learning the French language.  First, challenge of the day...how do you use accent marks in blogging?  Already, I have erred in not placing an accent mark about the e in debut in the title.

The first step was to join an online program called Duolingo.  It is free to join and has at least got me started on basic vocabulary and sentence structure.  The program also pronounces for you, so you have the opportunity to hear what it should sound like.  This is what my homepage looks like on that site:



It has many great features.  First, you can see that the vocabulary focuses on things you would likely encounter in day to day life: food, animals, phrases, etc.  It also has some great ways of tracking progress.  You can see that I am now 21% fluent and could post that to my Linked In.  (I'm slightly nervous because I would not call myself 21% proficient...I have only had a few lessons.)

The program also helps learners by tracking progress (with the cute borders around each vocabulary section) and time dedicated to the activity (in the right hand corner under the green owl, as you can see in the line graph below).



The tool also encourages accountability by having you add friends on Facebook and sending email reminders to keep up with daily practice.

So, without further ado...I don't want to get an angry email today, so I had best do my Duolingo work.

Until next time.