Stressed Out?

Today, after visiting China, we watched a Ted Talk video on stress. If you weren't in class today, please watch it before next Tuesday's class.

Also for Tuesday's class, please download the New York Times article, How to Help Teenagers Embrace Stress, read it, annotate it, and summarize it (you know the drill), and bring it to class.

Finally, I am happy to report that it looks like all systems are go for our Call to Action Day adventure at the Armstrong School. Turns out that the people I talked to there are NDNU alums and are excited to have us visit. More details to follow.

Welcome to the Chinese Imperial Examination

It's time to get our class research project under way. Please have a look through the dyslexia resources found on the Armstrong School website. Choose one to explore, and bring a short written summary of it to class on Thursday.

On Thursday, we will visit China to explore the history of the Imperial Examination System. Please read the article found at http://www.sacu.org/examinations.html before class.

Welcome to Plato's Academy and ....

So this week we looked at education in Greece (Athens and Sparta) and Rome. It is funny to think of the Romans as the first to drop PE and music from the schools. Next week we will look at the Chinese Imperial Examination System.

For Tuesday's class, please read carefully the article I distributed, "Picture Yourself as a Stereotypical Male," and make purposeful annotations to it. You can also find the article on-line (with explorable links to the research discussed).Bring your written answers to the following questions: 

1. What are some hypotheses as to why men outperform women in a cluster of tests related to spatial ability?
2. What did the gender-priming experiment show?
3. What is "stereotype threat"?
4. Describe four of the experiments cited in the article that demonstrated the affects of stereotype threat.
5. What does the brain do in the ventral anterior cingulate cortex?
6. What social-psychological interventions can ameliorate the achievement gap? (N.B. look up words you aren't familiar with.)

If you look for the answers to these questions as you read and annotate, the task will be easier.

Perspectives on the Adolescent Brain

Today we watched two videos about the adolescent brain, Sarah-Jayne Blackmore's Ted Talk, and Dan Siegel's presentation for the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education. What did you learn from them? Do you think one video was better than the other, and if so, why? Where was the overlap, and how did their information or approach or purpose differ?

For Thursday's class, get ready to go to school in ancient Greece and Rome

Welcome to the Eduba (Sumerian School)

On Thursday, we will visit Mesopotamia and explore the education system of the people who invented writing, the Sumerians. Please read up on 9 Things You May Not Know About the Ancient Sumerians before Thursday.

Here is a link to a very short video from Oxford about cuneiform writing and cutting edge technology. If you are curious to know more about the Sumerian flood story, check out this video.

Dorothy Stang Presentation in the Theater Tuesday

We will leave directly from our classroom on Tuesday at 9:25 SHARP to meet in our four FYS sections "pod" in the NDNU Theater for a presentation with Q & A by Sister Rosanne, who wrote the book you read this summer. If you haven't read the book, check it out on reserve in library before Tuesday. You can find the summer reading questions on the Moodle page for our class. Bone up and be ready to discuss.

Finding and Sharing Good Information

As a seminar, we are working both independently and collectively. We are exploring new topics and ideas, and we are teaching and learning from each other. The next assignment does all of this explicitly.

Creating a Collaborative Bibliography
The assignment due in class on Thursday has four parts:

1. Find an on-line scholarly article on a topic related to learning. It can be a primary or well supported secondary article as long as it includes strong supporting evidence and good references. Opinion pieces and overly simplistic popular articles won't work. (Make sure you are not posting an article that someone else has already posted.)
2. Post the link to your article in the comments on this blog post. I will review the posts as they go up and let you know if your article doesn't meet the above criteria.
3. Download and do a close reading of your article with purposeful annotation. (Harvard's "Thinking Intensive Reading)
4. Write a short précis (summary) and be ready to discuss it in class. On Thursday, everyone will introduce his/her article to the class for discussion.
5. Your annotated article and summary are to be turned in to me at the end of class on Thursday unless you are on the soccer team.
6. SOCCER TEAM: Please do yours as above and be ready to share as soon as you get back. Good luck!