Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Lesson Ideas for Teaching Socialnomics!

As I was watching the video clip from the previous blog, I was brainstorming ways to incorporate it into my current lesson plans.  The Midterm Elections are November 2 and I think it would be a great idea to create an assignment for students using socialnomics.

Lesson Plan:

Do Now: Watch the 4 minute video clip and share student reactions/responses

Lecture: Define Midterm elections and describe "traditional" differences between Democrats and Republicans.

Lesson: Students would create a online video using social media to discuss an aspect of the Midterm Election process, it could be the election results, impact on House, impact of Senate, role of media, media bias, etc.

The students would have two weeks to research, create and present their project.  I realize my outline above is vague and would need to be ironed out over the next week, but I would like to role it out the first week in November to see what the students will do with it.

I am excited about the idea and I really think my students will like it as well.  On a side note, I have seen videos like this in the past on other topics and I always find them thought provoking and good place to start a discussion for a general class topic.

In this case, I think it ties in nicely with my unit on the media.  Currently, I just talk about traditional forms of media so this would allow me to branch out more and make it more relevant and meaningful to the students.

As always, thank you for sharing this wonderful links.  I plan on exploring more of them throughout the year.

Socialnomics is a reality!




I teach history of U.S. government and economics and I think the following link would be very helpful for expanding my unit on media and incorporating the role of "social media".





Sunday, October 3, 2010

Creating Professional Development Opportunities with Bloom’s Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy for the 21st Century

                This activity allowed us to demonstrate 21st century approaches to education by requiring creativity, collaboration, evaluation and application.  Each person individually came up with a professional development suggestion and then we collaborated to narrow it down to three professional development ideas.  Then we had to evaluate our peers from another group and demonstrate our ability to move it up Bloom’s Taxonomy to make it a more meaningful professional development activity.  It also allowed us to reevaluate our original suggestions to our peer’s suggestion which requires us to reflect on the overall success of our individual and group effort.  I found the activity to be a good tool to promote discussion and internal self-reflection.
                I personally think the lesson would have been more effective if we had laptops to write the question so it would be easier to reword and edit.  In addition, I would have benefited with some more time to come up with creative suggestions.  Finally, it would have been a better idea to have the groups larger to promote more discussion and debate.  In turn, this would have made it more difficult to compromise and forced the group to narrow their focus; thereby making the activity more challenging.
                I enjoyed this activity but I also found it slightly frustrating when a group member wanted to get bogged down in particulars that were not pertinent or relevant.  I found myself bringing the group back to task and wondered to myself if I would be perceived as bossy; however, overall I enjoyed the activity and enjoyed getting to know peers in my class on a deeper level. 
                In this activity, I got to apply Bloom’s new taxonomy in a “practical” use.  In addition, I did not realize that I would be solely in charge of planning professional development activities as an administrator.  I now realize it is not as easy as it looks.  I also am considering one of my suggestions as a viable option for me as a future administrator.  I think it would be a create idea to create an online professional development community for the teachers.  I will be starting my internship in the Spring and this is something I may be able to implement at my current place of employment.