Left Lane Ends

So, the argument goes that if we don’t block YouTube, our students will go home and video tape themselves going for a ride in the dryer like the video that they saw online. Point taken. But, there are fallacies to that argument:

1. The same ‘ride in the dryer‘ video is available on multiple sites, not just YouTube.com
2. Students were creating these videos the day after they got their hands on a camera - well before the creation of YouTube or other social video sites. (we’ve seen some creative ones here in our 1:1 environment that is going on its 6th year)
3. Even a block of the general category (video sites or social networking or network file storage/backup) will not prevent someone from creating their own website (like back in the olden days … remember those days??) and posting the video there

At this point, you may be asking ‘what’s the point?’. Well, the real power of sites like YouTube are demonstrated at places like Global Voices Online (go ahead - check out the chinese demonstration video that their government is trying to erradicate from the online world!!). I just don’t see how it could NOT be powerful education to draw similarities and differences between a current demonstration video in China and our American system of government. How can our students participate in this live history that is taking place before our lives if we block them out of it? Or is the simplistic history as outlined in a textbook the real way to go?

Teaching is always new to me, and I am continually fascinated by my students’ creativity and learning. The opportunity to empower my students through thier involvement in community issues, and to help them find relevance in history by connecting it to today interests me; mixing this with new technological approaches makes it even more exciting for us all.

~Michelle Forman, High School Teacher

• Example 1: Silence Speaks - Stories to heal
  
• Example 2: A Lesson Germ - How do economics, capitalism and social justice intersect?
• Example 3: SFETT ICAN Festival de Cine
• Resource 1: Center for Digital Story Telling
• Resource 2: Article - Implementing a Social Justice Curriculum in an Inner City School
• Resource 3: eMINTS - eThemes

Digital storytelling can take a variety of forms, but what truly makes it a powerful medium? There are a variety of programs out there from MovieMaker to PowerPoint to Producer to Photostory 3. However, simply because there are free tools available certainly does not mean that we, as educators, need to use the newest and greatest software out there just because we can. While there is a place for it, I can’t tell you how many times I see students required to spit information out through MovieMaker instead of PowerPoint with the assumption that the student has learned more.

No, I believe that it is imperative to focus on the instructional content and that it is imperative that we search for avenues that allow students to be drawn into our educational environment. What is important to them and how does that intersect with the curriculum? This certainly does not mean that we only teach what the students want - absolutley not. There are many topics that our students may not be aware of or that they may not have thought through to which they can directly identify.

What amazes me is how involved students get when they start to investigate the stories around them. Take, for example, the immigration issue that came to the fore in the spring of 2006. Our students (here in Texas) became very engaged with this specific social issue - and teachers leapt on the opportunity to help enable students.

I did not have to stretch to find the connection between social justice and state standards. I did not spend my free time with my manuals and try to “fit” social justice in. Rather, I made the mandated curriculum “fit” into the social justice pedagogy and practice that I was using with my students on a daily basis. When we had to manipulate and compute very large (up to billions) and very small (decimals) numbers, we looked at census information, the number of Native Americans that were killed, infected with disease, or relocated to reservations, the amount of money corporations make as compared to the wages of the working class that those corporations employ and exploit.

~Laurence Tan, Teacher, Los Angeles

So, it’s time to get creative … find out how we can enable our students to change the world … and how that passion is tied to our history, the beauty of mathematics, fluid writing and reading, scientific history and knowledge and beyond.

The Center for Latin American and Border Studies provides Border Studies Curriculum in the form of 20 lesson plans. Looks like these have some great potential for modification and use through a number of subject areas.

So, I ran a cynical Google search today (yes, I continue to add to Google’s growing data set and power) with the search terms: teaching, teachers, to, teach, real, life, connections. I NEVER search with so many ‘AND’ terms and was really just expecting a bunch of junk results that claimed to have the answers to teaching with real world connections. (in truth, I was planning to point out all the junk out there - jokes on me!)
Enter this website result: Rethinking Mathematics

While the result is promoting a published book, I quickly started to glean ideas from topics posted within. In fact, the quote that sucked me in was this:

I thought math was just a subject they implanted on us just because they felt like it, but now I realize that you could use math to defend your rights and realize the injustices around you.… [N]ow I think math is truly necessary and, I have to admit it, kinda cool. It’s sort of like a pass you could use to try to make the world a better place.

— Freida, ninth grade, Chicago Public Schools

Don’t'cha’ just love it?? Example classroom scenario titles got my brain churning:

• Mortgage OKs tougher for local blacks, Latinos
• The War in Iraq : How Much Does it Cost?
• Reading the World With Math
• Justice for Janitors

So, why don’t we stir up some trouble in our classrooms, engage our students in issues that really matter to them and help them to start changing the world? You know I’m gonna get this one to read…