Blogs

First of all, I’d like to say that I love Facebook.  I move around a lot, and it has been a great way to keep up with all of my friends and family who live far away.  For many people, sites like Facebook and Twitter are simply places to network socially.  They provide a simple way to share with the world the answer to “What’s on your mind?”.

I have a love/hate relationship with social media. It can be a great way to keep current with certain events and individuals, but it can also become yet another demand on one’s time. There has been a flurry of news articles lately on how many social media users feel obligated to stay online; indeed, many feel compelled to constantly tweet or update their Facebook statuses, even while on vacation or during the night.

Adolescents and teens are the heaviest users of social media – a 2009 Pew report found that 73% of kids aged 12-17 used social media regularly. It’s no wonder, then, that some teachers have decided to shake up traditional lesson plans a bit by incorporating social media in their classrooms.

In the past couple of weeks, the word “hero” has been a huge part of the news media as 30 American soldiers were tragically killed in a recent Chinook crash in Afghanistan. The crash caused the highest number of American casualties in one day since the beginning of the conflict. As the names of the fallen were being released, friends and family remembered the soldiers as heroes. One 10-year-old boy posted a picture of his dad, a pilot of the downed helicopter, on CNN’s iReport and described him as a hero. This touching personal account of loss touched many people and caused an outpouring of comments on the site.

The past six months has seen a renaissance of superheroes, particularly in feature films such as The Green Lantern, Captain America, and Thor.  The final installment of the Harry Potter movies, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, however, does not feature a superhero, but instead a hero in the classic sense – one who completes his quest and hence concludes his archetypal heroic journey. In completing his quest, Harry joins the pantheon of archetypal heroes such as Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Huckleberry Finn, Luke Skywalker, and many others.

We study history to learn from other people’s mistakes and successes. More importantly than learning the facts about particular historical events, we want students to form connections with the history they are studying so they can apply the lessons to their own lives. In order to do this, we can help students compare and contrast historical characters and events to current events and people. The featured resources on The Gateway to 21st Century Skills this week employ creative techniques for the study of the American Civil War.

The American Civil War remains one of the saddest chapters in U.S. history. It lasted for four years, divided a nation and some families, and forever shaped the American psyche. For many people, it was a war of horrible necessity – a last resort when political and cultural ideologies clashed, and all hopes for a peaceful resolution faded. While the vast majority of battles were fought in southern and mid-Atlantic states, it was also a war that saw conflicts around the country in places like Vermont, New Mexico, and Florida.

Not all of the students in my chemistry class will be going on to earn a technical degree in college. Although understanding the intricacies of balancing equations, predicting the products of reactions, and carefully following the scientific method is important for these students, they also need to learn to be educated consumers of scientific information.

In the 1980s, a new branch of science emerged that seemed to be straight out of the pages of a science fiction novel. While the new science didn’t initially garner much attention from the general press or population, scientists and ethicists were all abuzz about nanotechnology. Despite some news items that occasionally crop up in the mainstream media, nanotechnology has quietly continued to evolve and impact our everyday lives.

Putting the words school and religion together in a sentence is enough to make many people cringe. Separation of church and state is an important facet of the U.S. government, and teachers tend to avoid religious topics so they don’t run the risk of crossing that fine line. Joann’s featured resources this week on the Gateway give teachers tools to teach students about world religions in a fair and balanced manner.

For the past several years, the intermediate public school in my town has hosted a World Religions Day for the 6th graders. For an entire day, sixth grade classes move with their teachers from classroom to classroom every 40 minutes or so to learn about different religions and cultures. Each presentation is led by either a local religious leader or a practicing member (usually a parent) of a particular faith. There is absolutely no proselytizing, “recruitment” efforts, or one-upmanship regarding the speakers’ personal faiths in relation to other faiths.