Sistine Chapel Ceiling, Vatican City

Sistine Chapel Ceiling Jing

European Claims to N. America in 17th Century

2009-10-30_2126

Four Score Podcast

Rick's Studio

RickDerman's webcam recorded Video - October 25, 2009, 11:38 AM

Use of Web Albums Combined with Google Earth for the Classroom

I frequently use iPhoto on my laptop combined with a projector to show students in my American History and Fine Art classes images relevant to the lesson plan of the day. It is not infrequent, particularly in my American History classes to jump back and forth between an image of an event – like Magellan’s ships – and a map – like the Straits of Magellan – to illustrate an historical point. In my Art classes I might discuss architecture – like that of Pompeii – and show painted depictions of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. In both instances, having images embedded in Google Earth can give a sense to the students of to where it is that I am referring.

If we are planning on going on a class trip to, say, the Fitzmaurice Ruins or Montezuma’s Castle, embedded photos in Google Earth can help the students understand where the ruins are and their relationship to each other.

Kestrel High School students go on many wilderness trips. When we plan our school yearbook, we can use Picasa and Google Earth to supplement the yearbook sections on wilderness trips by showing – instead of a just a collage of images – where exactly the images were taken.

Social Networking Sites

Back in the late eighties/early nineties I produced a kids show at a television station in New York City and hired as the writer a very creative young woman who had done some terrific things for Nickelodeon. And she’d pound out weekly scripts on the electric typewriter in her cubicle. I kept telling her how much easier her life would be if she would only type her scripts on a computer. But she steadfastly refused. Long story short and nearly twenty years later: she’s trying to get me to sign up for LinkedIn.

Since all that I know about this SNS is the little that my former colleague has told me (popular among professionals in the television industry), and the Boyd-Ellison journal article, I have taken on to research this site.

What was the target audience for this social networking site?

The target audience are business and professional people. Currently, there are approximately 150 industries networking within the site. Of the 45 million members, half are outside of the United States.

How long was the site in existence?

The site was conceived in the fall of 2002, and launched in May of 2003 with 300 members.

Why was it popular? What was its demise?

LinkedIn’s popularity appears to be due to making connections with colleagues that people have lost touch with and establishing networks; very much like networks people create when job hunting.

Is/was there another competitor in the same market that was more popular?

There are other sites competing for the same market that LinkedIn goes after. However, it appears that there is no other site currently as successful. One such site is Visible Path a business network that tracks the contacts members make during the course of business. Another site attempting to be competitive is Fast Pitch! which helps small businesses promote their products.

Would you ever consider creating an account and using it? Explain your reason using a personal experience as an example.

I may consider creating an account on LinkedIn, if I can manufacture another half-hour in the day. I guess everyone creates a priority list of chores and responsibilities. I feel like I am so far behind the 8-ball already with personal correspondence, that if I begin forming contacts and communicating with long-lost colleagues, necessary responsibilities – like coursework and lesson plans – will fall by the wayside. If I every get up to date and have a portion of free time on my hands, I’ll sign up for LinkedIn.

engagement trumps topic

Steve Hargadon makes a great point, that: topic or content is not as important as engagement or involvement in a social network site; spoken like a true marketer, or advertising executive, or circus barker. The idea always is to have the public pay the quarter and get them into the tent even if the dancing orangutan isn’t really dancing or an orangutan. And once you have a mass of people wandering around inside the tent, maybe they’ll figure out a way to make their own amusement.

That kind of reminds me of the practice range on Oakland Golf Course across the street from my childhood home. In the spring and summer, all the kids from the neighborhood played baseball on the range after school, and in the fall we played football. The groundskeepers would chase us away on a regular basis. Thinking about it, though – in Steve Hargadon terms - how foolish those golf course workers were. Because if they had only sold advertising and put up billboards for Rawlings gloves, Schwinn bicycles, Chunky and Snickers candy bars around the range, it wouldn’t have mattered if people shagged balls, played baseball or football, the golf course would have made money from whatever was played upon the grass.

Here's the link to the wiki that I have set up for my high school classes that I had described in my previous posting: http://dermanskestrelclasses.wikispaces.com/

Wiki's for my Classes

Wiki’s for my Classes

I’m doing this a little bit backwards, in that I am writing this blog before I create the wiki(s). The other day I decided to give my American History class a one-period online research assignment. I took the students to the computer lab and passed out four different research questions among the 16 students:

• Describe the physical attributes of the Spanish Galleon: size, weight, number of guns, masts, quarters for crew, etc. How was food prepared? Where did people sleep? How did they go to the bathroom? How did they keep clean?

• Describe the physical attributes of the Mayflower: size, weight, guns, masts, quarters for crew, quarters for passengers. How was food prepared? Where did people sleep? How did they go to the bathroom? How did they keep clean?

• Research the history of Roanoke Colony. Why did people decide to settle in that location? What happened there.

• What instruments did people use to navigate the oceans in the 1500’s and 1600’s and exactly how did those instruments work?

As I observed the students in the computer lab I realized, for one thing, how limited their research skills were. A number of them were frustrated with their results. What a great wiki project! And experiment.

It will be interesting to see if the students get involved and dive into the project. It will also be interesting to see how built out the wiki’s become given the individual research the students have already done.

Perhaps I’m being overly ambitious at this point – not having created a wiki yet – but I would like to create one for my fine art class. The other day, during a break, a few of the students and I began to talk about tattoo designs that we were thinking about getting. I think that a great project would be having the students design fantasy tattoos for themselves. Then using Photoshop, the students can size the design and see what they would look like on different parts of their bodies. And this whole process can be posted on the wiki.

Instructional Design Models

Instructional Design Models

I’ve always enjoyed B.F. Skinner because he was such a character. My psychology professor in college was a pure behaviorist and he even found a textbook for us that was constructed using behaviorist principles, like immediate positive reinforcement.

I had worked as a waiter for the two summers prior to taking Pysch 101. Consequently, the one exam question that I remember from that course was:

I go to the same restaurant for dinner twice a week and always have the same waiter. How would I assure the best service from the waiter?

1. not tip him at all
2. tip him each time I dine at the restaurant
3. tip him only occasionally

I knew that to answer the question properly, I had to circle ‘C’ because, according to Skinner, intermittent reinforcement would elicit the best service. But, I also knew, from my summer waiter jobs, that it wouldn’t be long before the professor would have a bowl of hot soup fall into his lap. So it was with some interest to learn that Skinnarians still roam the earth.

However, I do find myself returning again and again to our class discussion board to see if someone has responded to my entries. It really doesn’t bother me when an entry is not commented upon, but when it is…oh, boy! Intermittent reinforcement. I feel like a pigeon pecking on that lever just waiting for a little morsel to come rolling my way. So, if the blogisphere continues to grow and we introduce discussion boards and blogs into the educational process and endorse social networking as a way to aggregate knowledge: Are teaching students a new way to learn or are we conditioning students to become so attached to the web that they become a character out of William Gibson’s Neuromancer?

Behaviorism acts on what is objectively observed, not what meaning is given to what is being observed. The cognitive theories, on the other hand, look into what the mind is thinking during a certain act/action. A behaviorist would be interested in observing a thirsty person grabbing a bottle of water as a reaction to the person’s thirst. A cognitive theorist would be interested in understanding why the thirsty person chose a blue bottle of water as opposed to a clear one.

The university that I attended for graduate work in American Civilization was known for its strong anthropology and linguistic departments. The strength of those departments influenced the orientation of the American Civilization department away from the traditional American Studies History/Art History/Literature route toward a distinctive cognitive anthropological bent. I have adopted that approach in teaching American History and even in teaching Art to my high school students. I do not teach events for the sake of teaching the events themselves but as markers for the ideas that either shaped the events or evolved from them. In my art classes I teach art as a language where the viewer perceives an emotion or thought from the image that is created; it is important for the artist to master the language in order to convey the desired thought or emotion. Relative to that, one of my favorite all-time books is E.H. Gombrich’s Art and Illusion. Gombrich approaches the psychology of perception from an art historical perspective as opposed to Rudolph Arnheim’s approach to perception of art from a psychological perspective (Art and Visual Perception).

Around the time I was reading Gombrich, I had a girlfriend who would grind her teeth in the middle of the night and wake me up in the process. I decided to employ a distinctively behaviorist approach to the problem. Every time I heard her grind her teeth, I’d poke her. I did this for months expecting the negative conditioning to eventually work. Last time I saw her I noticed that she managed to reverse all of the orthodontic work that her father had invested in. The behavioral approach didn’t work. And I can only wonder what was going on in her head that had caused that nightly vent of anxiety.

A New Pedagogy?

I think that Will Richardson is a very smart guy. But he’s got it all wrong when it comes to technology restrictions and filters in schools. Computer restrictions are good for students. It makes them work harder to find work-arounds. It’s a teaching tool.

Whenever the school’s filter blocks a site that I try to access, I just ask a student for the work-around. Any student. I don’t know when the last time Richardson taught teenagers. The best way to motivate adolescents to do something is to tell them they can’t.

In fact, I am tempted to propose to Kestrel’s administration that the school change its No Smoking policy to: “Instead of getting some exercise and walking all the way around the corner to smoke, please feel free to light up on school grounds so that you can help put money into the pockets of our local merchants and large multinational corporations, and, ensure that our health care industry remains the most robust and profitable in the world.”

A little bit further down in his blog, Richardson writes of the reaction of a portion of the public to Obama’s speech to school children (even before he gave it), and the marginalization of the nation’s schools in the education of the nation’s youth in various areas. I believe that point that Richardson failed to make is the importance of exposing students to different points of view. Of course, as many had known, the President’s speech was not politically motivated or loaded with socialistically charged points of view. But that is not to say, it is wholly American to have our students gain a balanced picture of the world by exposing them to various perspectives and points of view. And, ironically, it was factions on the political right – purportedly defenders of free speech – who were most opposed to the President of the United States addressing the nation’s children.

Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy

Students, in order to function as responsible adults, must learn to think critically. I attempt, especially in my American History classes, to create a scaffolding for the students to build upon, for critical thinking and analysis.

Richardson (pp.10-13) notes the dangers of students landing on inappropriate sites and revealing personal information. However, another danger in this read/write universe in which our students are immersed, is accepting as the truth factually incorrect and politically loaded material, that is frequently presented in slick legitimately-looking packaging.

If people take information presented to them, in our media rich environment, at face value, they may loose their ability to see a situation objectively, and, consequently, formulate an opinion based upon incorrect facts. Many of my students last fall, for example, were supporting John McCain for President primarily because they believed that, were Obama elected, he would take away their guns. Certainly, there were enough valid justifications to support the Republican candidate without a specious reason concocted to rally support of gun owners; but how were the high school students to know?

I teach students to question everything they read on the web, hear on the radio, and watch on television. Students learn the difference between editorials and news reports and the publications that will provide them with unadulterated factual material.

Further, I make the effort to have American history synthesized and integrated with current events so students see the relevance of the past to their present. An example was a class discussion last fall of Roe vs. Wade following a discussion of the Supreme Court decision in a televised Presidential debate. The emotional class discussion that followed covered the rights of the individual as guaranteed by the Constitution, the power of the Supreme Court, and such provocative ideas as when does life begin. I believe that our readings in the area, and the thoughtful class discussion, gave the students a realization that issues have more depth to them than the buzz phrases associated to them; that questioning issues and opinions, and digging to find the underlying facts and philosophies will enable the students to make their own educated decisions on any issue.

Initial Meeting

Hello, this is my first blog post