Blogging

I was so pleased to be able to set up my own blog page. I believe it was in the Power Tools course that we spent a brief time trying to set up a blog, I was unable to do so, which was frustrating. Being able to blog, in and of itself, enhanced my learning experience. Blogging was “my own small space” on the Internet. I worked diligently on my statement “view my complete profile.” What I wrote was too long to meet the standard “view my complete profile”. I had to reconfigure what I wrote, so people would still be able to view what I wanted them to read about me, if they so desired. My blog served as a reference where I can return at any point and see everything I was writing and thinking. This process was helpful in understanding how my knowledge, reactions, and insights evolved over a period.

There was one situation where the blog could have hindered my learning experience. After I wrote my discussion board response to the question about rewards pro and con, I started to read other responses, as I had to respond to two other responses. I found the answers my colleagues gave interesting enough that I read every classmates’ response to the questions about the pros and cons of rewards. I learned five distinct reward systems of which I was not aware, as well as re-familiarizing myself with two other reward systems. Even the responses where I did not learn something new, the thoughtfulness and intelligence of my colleagues’ writings were impressive. This experience relates to blogs in that the blog could have hindered my learning experience. While it is not a big deal to link to someone’s blog space, it requires one to two extra steps. For the question on rewards, I would have taken the extra steps. However, for other questions that might not hold as much interest to me, the extra steps could be the moderating variable against looking at other answers.

My views of teaching Social Studies have been changed profoundly since entering the course. The possibilities now seem endless in how Social Studies can be both relevant and educational. Many examples come to mind as I progressed from viewing Social Studies as something I would just have to teach, to something that has so much potential. For starters, I was given two geography objectives by my field experience teacher and was told to create two lessons. My initial reaction was “what a boring topic.” Of what seem to be the three main categories under Social Studies – history, civics, and geography, my sense is most people would consider geography the least interesting of the three categories. Most people certainly does not include everyone, as Mary Haas, in her article Teaching Geography in the Elementary School states, “There is a great need to increase the quantity and quality of geographic education in elementary schools to overcome ignorance of geography.” With that said, I was still faced with the reality that I had to teach those objectives. I was able to be resourceful and come up with lessons that the students found engaging and the teacher thought were good lessons.

These lessons lack the drama of the lessons I was able to plan for the American Revolution. I am still excited about my hook lesson. I can still see the look of amazement on the faces of the students when they walk into the room. I have since seen your feedback on my hook lesson and see how I took a really good idea and lost so much by my initial implementation. I also find the interdisciplinary way of teaching social studies to be an excellent way to integrate and maximize the learning experience for the students. Putting together my lesson on art and the American Revolution was a surprisingly fun and productive learning experience. In support of social studies being an excellent interdisciplinary way of learning, Leanne Nickelsen in her book Comprehension Activities for Reading in Social Studies and Science states, “The most logical place for instruction in most reading and thinking strategies is in social studies …. The reason is that the strategies are useful mainly when the student is grappling with important but unfamiliar content.”

I also found the concept of the backward design to be a novel and exciting approach to teaching Social Studies. This concept can also be used for other subjects as well. How brilliant to start at the end point, and then plot your course of action to get to the desired “essential question”. Also, the constructivist approach and the focus on making the social studies relevant, as described in the Maxim book, is a good base for teaching this subject.

My class presentation was fun to plan and to present. My initial reaction was “oh, no” what could I do for this assignment. I was excited when I came up with my idea for my lesson. I asked you since I was doing the presentation alone, could I do it in half the required fifteen minutes. I was disappointed when you said the purpose of the lesson still required the fifteen minutes. The irony was I had to redo my lesson about three times to cut it down to fifteen minutes, as I had to leave much of the lesson on the “cutting board”.