Rewired Learning Blog

Teaching with the inverted bell curve (well curve) pt.1

2011-03-22T13:53:57-04:00

Most classes have a grade arrangement where upon examination the scores fall into a bell curve or some pattern that looks similar to one. What happens if the reverse is true? There is no bell curve but instead you see a “well curve” where it looks like the bell curve turned upside down. I can think of two reasons for this occurrence. First is jus a bad spate of randomness. If you go to a casino and visit the roulette table, you might see a digital chart of the last 10 numbers rolled for that game. Look around at enough...

Properly using Wiki in the classroom

2010-03-23T15:38:32-04:00

Last week, an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the use of Wikipedia in the college atmosphere. The high use of Wiki in for college research is not really surprising, and unless there are some great measures curbing the use of Wiki as a research tool, I doubt that this will change much. The argument against the use of Wikipedia is simple and straightforward: anyone can write something on Wikipedia. Where was this dependence on Wikipedia created? Well….simply…in high school. Millions of high school students are taking a class in U.S. History right now. Those same students...

The New "New" Four Day School Week

2010-03-16T15:41:35-04:00

This week is graduation testing in Georgia. For those not familiar with graduation testing…they are simply tests given in 11th grade that you must pass in order to graduate. There are four tests given (language arts, math, social studies and science) and passing each one is required for graduating high school in Georgia. The tests themselves are not the subject of this but more the time away from classes. I have already shown my agreement for many of the ideas written in John Medina’s book Brain Rules, but I want to take one of those ideas a bit further. He...

When education is too bright and shiny for education

2010-02-27T06:43:09-05:00

Recently we had a presentation from a map company since it was our turn in the school system to purchase maps. He offered the traditional, never replaceable pull down maps as well as many other hands-on materials that we have other editions of. Then he presents a new on-line product linked with multiple overlay maps and satellite images. As someone who writes on the idea of using technology in school, at first I thought it was great. There is a learning curve and there are some limitations on the amount of people that can use it at one time and...

Why education on-line improves due dates

2010-02-23T22:57:29-05:00

Why? No forgetting. Working on-line means having the access of creation and submission at your fingertips. It is like writing a birthday card at the mailbox and forgetting to send it. Creating something or preparing a project on a computer often means printing it out or burning it to a disk in order to physically hand it to the teacher. Admittedly I am not quite to the level of all electronic submissions, but I should be and tend to be soon...although that is a future topic to discuss. As our world is increasingly electronic, it makes little sense for us...

Bank taxes and education

2010-02-18T16:00:45-05:00

It would seem that a site about education would not be a place for any type of specific political ideas. Yet this is a site trying to explore, though not as much recently, ideas and uses of technology, and some have to be funded along the way. My school district, and many others nationwide, have experienced teacher furloughs where there are days that teachers are just not paid and don’t come in. Often these days are teacher workdays and the students are not affected. Still, I have seen my salary decrease by around 3.5%, relatively a reverse cost of living...

Using slideshare and student projects...again

2010-01-10T17:38:49-05:00

With finals in December it has been quite a time since I updated the site. Back in the swing after a week it is time to start taking some time to look at tasks again to update them out of archaic manners to a more computer friendly sphere. Last week my AP Psychology students were asked to create 6 slides on PowerPoint. Three were to be how they view their gender role and 3 were to be how they view the roles of the opposing gender. I asked them to email me their slides and I will compile them. I...

Trying to ride the Wave...Google style

2009-11-30T22:59:03-05:00

So today I got the Google Wave invitation. I'm playing around with it now and for classroom uses, I see two issues so far. First - because it is still in limited release, getiing a whole classroom of people to independently to get the wave is a logistical challenge. Second - many schools are Microsoft IE, there needs to be a Google Chrome install that would have to be on every computer in the lab. Obviously the second point is negated if they have a project to work on at home. But that would bring up the second problem of...

What do you want me to teach you?

2009-11-24T21:44:18-05:00

Today I gave my classes an outline for the last chpater we are responsible to know before the winter break. The 12 page outline had about 30 blanks in it (primary vocab words from the chapter) and one student asked if we were going to go over the blanks. I am not sure if they were serious or not, but I have not done something like this before because I thought it was too much like hand feeding them information. Now giving them those 30 blanks would be just like giving them an outline and have them not read the...

NCSS 2009 - The state of technology in High School Social Studies Education

2009-11-17T21:36:59-05:00

This past weekend was the 2009 National Council for the Social Studies convention in Atlanta, Georgia. While I will have other posts on the materials presented, the one thing that was lacking was the presentations concerning new ways to teach or present materials. Many of the sessions were material related, which is needed because there are many minute instances in history that are unique teaching moments that create interest in the student. Still, providing students with the tools they will need in college and beyond is critical in the education of the student. Web quests and PowerPoint’s worked in 1998,...