As someone who grew up surrounded by the military, not only are both my parents Army veterans, my father served both in Vietnam and Desert Storm. Not to mention it has been on my mind lately, I decided to focus my attention a service learning plan focusing on veterans of foreign wars.
Brief Description:
Eighth grade students interviewed veterans from World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War as part of an interdisciplinary unit in social studies and English language arts. The veterans' contributions and insights made the curriculum more meaningful, real, and relevant to the students' lives. Through the veterans' first-hand knowledge and experiences, students learned valuable lessons about humanity, patriotism, and sacrifice not provided by textbooks.
Veterans
In looking at this service plan, it is a well-thought out interdisciplinary plan utilizing both English and Social Science. Not only does it address the many aspects of inquiry in social science, it gives students a new appreciation for the service that veterans have done. It allows students the opportunity to interview Veterans, giving them access to primary sources rich in information. It also offers students a unique perspective on war, bravery, and patriotism. The veterans can really emphasize how war is not like what students watch at the movies. Learning about war through a first person perspective and some of the long term effects, such as life altering disabilities, students can have their perspective’s drastically changed.
The combination of interviewing, compiling, relating, and creating all work to make for an in-depth experiment in social science. The students honed their research skills by interviewing the Veterans, learning to formulate questions that gained the information needed. At the end the students extrapolated the data they needed to get a real world picture of what the Veterans faced and how the ramifications of which affect them today. It gave them insight into the Veterans’ psyche and an idea of what bravery and patriotism really looked like. In the end the students worked together to create a quilt representing both the students and the Veterans’ accomplishments. This is one part of the service learning plan. The English portion also involved reading relevant literature and relating it back to what the soldiers might have experienced. Creating their own personal works to communicate what they felt about their experiences with the Veterans. It resulted in a long term relationship between the school and the Veterans. Not only did one class benefit, but future classes as well.
Several challenges that I could see, would possibly be not enough students to interview the volunteering Veterans and perhaps the students’ reticence in interviewing Veterans. I think students would hesitate only because they wouldn’t know how to react to the Veterans. The plan mentions they overcame the problem with the Veterans’ by creating a panel for those Veterans’ not interviewed to evaluate and observe the students. It might have further helped with the students’ reticence if perhaps two students interviewed each student. It has been my experience that students usually feel braver when they have a partner. Overall, the plan is really well thought out and could potentially be someth
Showing posts with label social_science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social_science. Show all posts
Friday, September 25, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
GIS in today's world
Back in 2000 I worked in the Supervisor of Elections office. It being the beginning of a new century we were about to undergo the census. What this meant for us is that voter districts would be rezoned based on the new numbers provided. I was interested because of my interest in technology, but we were pretty busy because it was a huge election year. We were excited because we going to be using this new software call GIS. At the time I had a vague idea of what that meant. My friend was thrilled though because as a geography major it might new and exciting things for her field. Come to 2009 and the software is being discussed for use in the secondary classroom.
In “Teaching with rather than about Geographic Information Systems,” Hammond and Bodzin are examining ways for this software to successfully be used in the classroom. In order to grasp some of the more technical aspects of the program I was required to do a bit of additional research, in addition to reading the full article. Not only did it help me grasp the full scale of what the software is capable of but it gave me a good idea of how it could be used in the classroom. It also helped me differentiate between GIS and programs such as Google Earth. It becomes readily apparent upon reading the article that one of the biggest obstacles to successfully implementing the software is the user. The software is highly technical and does require some in-depth instruction in its use. Although simple steps such as changing file names to easily identifiable ones can be the first step in making the software easier to use (Hammond, T., Bodzin, A., 2009). Ultimately it will be necessary to teach about the program so that it can be successfully integrated into the classroom.
Not only does it give you more control over maps and geographical tools. You can deconstruct maps layer by layer, which could be useful in a geography or a geology class. It allows you to see how the geography of a city developed, but you don’t have to limit it to this function. You can use Google Earth in conjunction with this software. The lack of familiar landmarks sometimes makes it difficult to students, using it with Google Earth you can do an overlay so that students can see those familiar landmarks as well as the relevant information provided by GIS.
For instance, in a unit about the Silk Road you can use GIS to map the Silk Road. Students would be able to learn that the name is deceptive and that the Road was more a route containing many paths. You would be able to examine the branches of the road and the difficult terrain that traders had to endure.
I liked the idea of mapping the Black Death pandemic, but once again proving that everything has already been done before, I found a lesson plan which utilizes GIS. It seems like an excellent idea, I would expand on this plan. Rather than limiting it to Britain, I would examine how it affected all of Europe. You could integrate it into a lesson about how the Black Death affected the economy, culture, and population. Discuss the anti-Semitic feeling that was prevalent at the time. Depending on what is being studied in science at the time, you could include the history of the disease. It would be a content spanning lesson.
Other ideas include having students map the Trail of Tears, the forced march by Native American tribes in the Southeast.
Students could map the Seminole War, pinpointing significant encounters and population groups. The questions to ask would be: How did the Seminoles evade American forces for so long? At what point could have American forces gained the advantage in battle?
My lack of knowledge in regards to the software at this point would make it difficult to plan an in-depth lesson plan because I’m only marginally aware of what it is capable of, but look forward to exploring it more. I downloaded several articles to read, hopefully they will provide me with more ideas.
The question to ask would be what difficulties do you think you would have in using and integrating this software into the classroom?
Hammond TC, Bodzin AM. (2009) Teaching with rather than about geographic information systems. Social Education, 73(3), online article
In “Teaching with rather than about Geographic Information Systems,” Hammond and Bodzin are examining ways for this software to successfully be used in the classroom. In order to grasp some of the more technical aspects of the program I was required to do a bit of additional research, in addition to reading the full article. Not only did it help me grasp the full scale of what the software is capable of but it gave me a good idea of how it could be used in the classroom. It also helped me differentiate between GIS and programs such as Google Earth. It becomes readily apparent upon reading the article that one of the biggest obstacles to successfully implementing the software is the user. The software is highly technical and does require some in-depth instruction in its use. Although simple steps such as changing file names to easily identifiable ones can be the first step in making the software easier to use (Hammond, T., Bodzin, A., 2009). Ultimately it will be necessary to teach about the program so that it can be successfully integrated into the classroom.
Not only does it give you more control over maps and geographical tools. You can deconstruct maps layer by layer, which could be useful in a geography or a geology class. It allows you to see how the geography of a city developed, but you don’t have to limit it to this function. You can use Google Earth in conjunction with this software. The lack of familiar landmarks sometimes makes it difficult to students, using it with Google Earth you can do an overlay so that students can see those familiar landmarks as well as the relevant information provided by GIS.
For instance, in a unit about the Silk Road you can use GIS to map the Silk Road. Students would be able to learn that the name is deceptive and that the Road was more a route containing many paths. You would be able to examine the branches of the road and the difficult terrain that traders had to endure.
I liked the idea of mapping the Black Death pandemic, but once again proving that everything has already been done before, I found a lesson plan which utilizes GIS. It seems like an excellent idea, I would expand on this plan. Rather than limiting it to Britain, I would examine how it affected all of Europe. You could integrate it into a lesson about how the Black Death affected the economy, culture, and population. Discuss the anti-Semitic feeling that was prevalent at the time. Depending on what is being studied in science at the time, you could include the history of the disease. It would be a content spanning lesson.
Other ideas include having students map the Trail of Tears, the forced march by Native American tribes in the Southeast.
Students could map the Seminole War, pinpointing significant encounters and population groups. The questions to ask would be: How did the Seminoles evade American forces for so long? At what point could have American forces gained the advantage in battle?
My lack of knowledge in regards to the software at this point would make it difficult to plan an in-depth lesson plan because I’m only marginally aware of what it is capable of, but look forward to exploring it more. I downloaded several articles to read, hopefully they will provide me with more ideas.
The question to ask would be what difficulties do you think you would have in using and integrating this software into the classroom?
Hammond TC, Bodzin AM. (2009) Teaching with rather than about geographic information systems. Social Education, 73(3), online article
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