Thursday, December 8, 2016

Final Exam!

If you have a moment to relax, check out the Stop-motion videos from our 5th graders.

Reminders:

Complete your blog/portfolio postings. For a reminder of the specific expectations for posts that you are required to complete for the semester, you can review them on the Meta-Blog here. You may skip the posts about your best work so far. Campus life activities you might consider attending if you still need one are the BSU party tonight and the Mass of Our Lady of Guadalupe at 7pm on Sunday.

You must submit your "Rubric of Me" on the day of the final exam in order to get credit. You can download the form from the campus portal if you need to.

Studying together... well, I don't really have to remind you, do I?

I have office hours tomorrow (Friday), 11-12:15.



The final exam will have three parts: (A) map id plus history; (B) research review; and (C) reflection.

PART A
For the final exam, you will need to be able to locate the following places on a map outline:
  1. Mesopotamia (Iraq)
  2. Athens & Sparta (Greece)
  3. China
  4. Aztec Empire (Mexico)
  5. Medieval Universities of Europe (e.g. Bologna, Italy) 
  6. and Africa (Timbuktu, Mali)
  7. NAPOLAs (Germany)
  8. American Public School System (e.g. Massachusetts)
In addition, as on the midterm exam, you will describe, in a sentence or two, the last four education systems and the purposes they served in their societies.

PART B
You will need to be able to briefly define/summarize the neuroscience concepts we have explored since the midterm exam:
  1. Cooperative/Collaborative Learning (all-class research project);
  2. Self-Affirmation of Values (and its relationship to stereotype threat, stress, etc.); 
  3. How Reading Fiction Affects Behavior; 
  4. and the American Public Education controversy of your choice.
Strong summaries will include an example of an experiment described in the article or talk. (Remember that you can find links to many of the readings and videos on this blog.)

PART C (take home or in class, your choice)
A reflection on mission, values and engagement experiences you have had in your first semester. You can download the prompt from the campus portal and write the reflection ahead of time, or you can write the reflection during the exam period. This is an assignment shared by all nine of the First Year Seminar sections.

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Wrapping It All Up with a Bow

For Tuesday's special all-pod meeting in 113 St. Mary's, you will need to take the Values in Action (VIA) Free Survey—http://www.viacharacter.org/www/Character-Strengths-SurveyYou must register to take the survey, but it is free. It will take about 15 minutes to complete.

IMPORTANT NOTE FROM VINCE FITZGERALD: "Be completely honest with yourself!  Don’t take the test based upon how you wish you are but upon how you truly are.  Have the courage to be honest with yourself!"  

Please print out a copy and bring it with you to class. In addition, please bring an updated copy of your Winding Path to class.




Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Welcome to American Public School

UPDATED Reminder: Blog posts are due for your responses to (1) the research conference and (2) the Social Justice Speaker Series talk. These need to be completed before the final exam on Tuesday, 12/13. If you missed the conference, please see me ASAP about an alternative post. If you missed the social justice talk, you can make it up by going to the next one on 12/1, at 7pm, in St. Joe's Lounge.
⇜⇜⇜⇜⇜⇝⇝⇝⇝⇝

This week we are exploring the history of American public schools and current controversies around public education in  this country. You can check out today's video here. I asked you to focus on the agendas and intentions of those providing or advocating public education as we have for the other education systems we have looked at this semester. Consider the importance of education for a democratic citizenry for example. 

Your assignment, due before class on Thursday, is to find a strong on-line article on a current controversy of public education from the list below, or one you come up with, and write a précis (summary) of the article. Please send me the link and the summary by email, or post them to the comments here.
  • Common Core
  • Standardization Conspiracies
  • Bussing/Segregation
  • Costs (~$10k/yr)
  • Charter Schools (which ones work?)
  • Bilingual Education
  • Home Schooling
  • Vouchers
  • Religion/Prayer in Schools/Creation-Evolution, etc.
  • Discipline/Violence/Security



Friday, November 11, 2016

National Political Institutes of Education

Update: For Thursday's class, read the excerpts posted as NAPOLA under handouts on the campus portal page for this class if you didn't get a copy in class today. Write a 15 minute free response and bring it to class with you. We're going to discuss empathy, literacy, and fiction, and look at ideas of Steven Pinker and others. Here's the Elif Shafak Ted Talk.

For Tuesday's class, please download from campus portal and read excerpts from All the Light We Cannot See, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Anthony Doerr. You can also watch Disney's cartoon, "Education for Death."

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Values and Vocations

Congratulations on your research project and last Thursday's conference. If you haven't already done so, please post to your blog, reflecting on the following questions:
What did you learn at the Conference? To what extent did you learn from the content of your peers’ presentations? …from their example as presenters? …from the communal act of supporting them as a member of the audience? 
Today's Self-Affirmation of Values exercise follows on the topic of Stereotype Threat that we explored last month. You can review some of the research in this article. A more extended video than the one we watched in class can be found here.

For Thursday's class, please complete the Windy Path Exercise found on the All FYE Blog as discussed today in class. Please bring your path to class with thought and questions to share.

IMPORTANT: Attending the Social Justice Speaker Series on Thursday, November 17th, at 4:30 p.m. is mandatory. Rose Jacobs-Gibson will be the invited speaker. In preparation, please read “A High Price to Pay: The Economic and Social Costs of Youth Gun Violence in San Mateo County.”


Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Research Project Due Thursday (Conference Mandatory)

The class research project on Collaborative/Cooperative Learning is due in class on Thursday. We will spend the class session on Thursday smoothing it out and preparing the presentation for Thursday afternoon's conference (3-4:40 in the Cafeteria).

Our greatest challenge is to coordinate with each other between now and Thursday and allow for everyone in the class to have access to the shared documents. Therefore, I am calling for the links to the google-docs that your groups are making public and anything else you think would be helpful. I will post them on the blog today.

If you were absent, please review the class blog, where I have posted the tasks and members of each group. The email message contains the NDNU email addresses of every student in the seminar so that you can connect if you haven't already.

Looking forward to another lively session with you all on Thursday!

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Small Group Research

Our research conference is a week from today (Thursday, November 3rd), in the Cafeteria, from 3-4:30 p.m.

In today's class we clarified our research topic and created small groups with specific research tasks to accomplish before we meet next Tuesday. The topic is cooperative learning at the elementary school level.

Group/Task 1: Web search for Bay Area elementary schools that claim to use cooperative learning models. Collect website addresses and capture relevant quotes from their websites. Expand or refine the search as needed.
  • Xavier
  • Yahaira
  • Kimberly
  • Jamie

Group/Task 2: Contact teacher staff at Marine Science Institute and 5th grade teacher Nicole Shelly to interview them about their explicit or informal use of cooperative learning in the program or classroom.
  • Jose
  • Kobe
  • Kelly
  • Joseph

Group/Task 3: Re-review the sources and summaries posted on this blog for relevancy to our new focus on elementary education, and determine if there are obvious gaps to fill. Look especially for hard data that supports cooperative learning methods.
  • Monica
  • Angelina
  • Sabrina
  • Sergio
  • Moises

Group/Task 4: Find empirical data (experiments) about the cognitive science of cooperative behavior/learning in humans, specifically elementary school-age humans. A good place to start or to assign to a group member is the sources from the posted articles on this blog.
  • Julie
  • Onica
  • Alissa
  • Larissa

If you were absent today, you have been assigned to the following groups:
  1. KIMBERLY (check in with Xavier)
  2. JOSEPH (check in with Jose)
  3. MONICA (check in with Angelina)
  4. ALISSA (check in with Onica)

Monday, October 24, 2016

Research Project Sources

UPDATE: For Thursday's class, review the material posted here, take notes on each article with regard to how it might be useful to our overall research project, and be prepared to be quizzed on the content.

Here are the nine article links and summaries that I received. If you don't see yours here, please follow up right away.

XAVIER

Link: http://www.nea.org/tools/16870.htm

This article pertains to the definition, benefits, overuse, and active learning of "Cooperative Learning." First they had used a definition from Kennesaw State University which stated: "teaching strategy where small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject." Then it went into research by Johnson & Johnson which indicated that cooperation compared to others results in better productivity and higher achievement. The overuse of 'Cooperative Learning'  stems from 'Randall' which she says that making members of the group responsible for each others can cause more of a burden and ignore the key points. It finally goes into of how it engages in 'Active Learning', in which it gives ownership of a small piece of material to a member and an opportunity to contribute.

---

JOSEPH

Group Work: Using Cooperative Groups Effectively

Link: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/setting-up-and-facilitating-group-work-using-cooperative-learning-groups-effectively/

Summary: This article is mainly trying to give as much information possible regarding high-level cooperative learning. Its informing the audience, which is probably educators seeking more informative lessons, on the different ways that one can learn in a group. It also goes into depth with topics such as the different theories of group learning, the reasoning behind those theories, and also the different ways that effective group learning can look like.

Title of article 2: 20 Cooperative Learning Tips and Strategies

Link: https://globaldigitalcitizen.org/20-collaborative-learning-tips-and-strategies-for-teachers

Summary: In this article, it doesn’t go into the madness of explaining different theories or ideas, it just states what to do. It lists 20 very specific and clear strategies to help college students learn at their best. Although it doesn't go into the history of cooperative learning and how it came to be, i still think that this is an effective article because it just gives you the hands on plan for teachers to help there students right away.

----

JULIE

Link: http://www.nea.org/tools/16870.htm

{No summary}

---

JOSE

https://www.aacu.org/leap/hips

I really like this article because one it talks about freshman year seminars and how beneficial they are to have them as a college student. But it also talks about collaborative research and it talks about two things how it shows people to work and solve problems in the company of others and also to further their own understanding by listening critically to others.

https://voting.svsu.edu/media/enrollmentmanagement/docs/Cooperative%20Learning%20Returns%20to%20College.pdf

I really like this article because it has a lot of research to back up the claims that cooperative learning actually is better than competitive or individual learning. There was one study that showed that college students who would score at the 50th percentile learning competitively would score at the 69th. Also those who scored at the 53rd percentile learning individually would score at the 70th learning cooperatively. Not only that but it also impacts personal development and satisfaction with the college effectiveness. Another thing is that there is a better quality of the relationships between students and faculty.

---

ANGELINA

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1055588.pdf

This document has to do with making cooperative learning work in a college classroom. It talks about five things that make cooperative learning work. Those five things are positive interdependence, individual accountability, interpersonal skills, face-to-face promotive interaction, and processing out. It states how cooperative learning has academic and social benefits.

---

KELLY

http://web.stanford.edu/dept/CTL/Newsletter/cooperative.pdf

    In a study by Stanford University, it is found that students that work in small groups are more successful in class or research assignments. Students are able to remember and retain more information when they are learning in a small group rather than other instructional formats such as lectures or individual assignments. The benefits of working in a small group includes increased participation of the students in class, and a better understanding and retention of the material that is being learned. But this study also shows that one of the greatest benefits that comes from working in a small group is that students acquire study skills that help contribute to their future success in school. The Newsletter also talks about the benefits that a teacher receives out of assigning their students to work in small group along with the struggles that come along with it.

---

LARISSA

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED448443.pdf

This article talks about the difference of cooperative learning verses collaberative learning. it talks about teachers and their point of views. It also talks about the benefits for both collaborative and cooperative learning.

---

MOISES

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct14/vol72/num02/Making-Cooperative-Learning-Powerful.aspx

The article “Making Cooperative Learning Powerful” written by Robert E. Slavin lists five key practices that bring out the tremendous potential in cooperative learning. First step listed is forming a team of diverse students who care about helping one another learn and reaching a successful point as a team. The second step listed is to set a team goal or target that determines every member to work hard. Third step is to ensure individual accountability making sure everyone does their duties. Fourth step listed is the teaching of communication and problem-solving skills so member master key interpersonal skills. The last key point is to integrate cooperative learning with other structures. At the end of the day lectures can be learned a lot easier when it comes from another student because of the language used.

---

ONICA

http://teaching.uncc.edu/learning-resources/articles-books/best-practice/instructional-methods/best-practices-summary

This link is a brief summary from UNC, Charlotte of what is cosnidered "best practices in college teaching" that characterizes different ways of teaching that includes different kind of different group practices such as discussions, and individual task reviews as well as roleplay to trigger problem-solving strategies, and personal meaning to what is being learned.

I hope this link serves our project well,

---

JAMIE

https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/team-based-learning/ (related to Joseph's 1st article)

Summary: The article I found was about having formal and informal cooperative learning groups. Informal cooperative groups usually consist of 2-4 students that work together to answer and respond to questions given to them by the instructor for just for parts of a class period. Examples of informal cooperative learning activities include think-pair-share, peer instructor, and lastly the jigsaw activity. Formal cooperative learning groups work in groups for one or more class periods to complete a task or assignment. The idea of cooperating learning is to help the individual and the the group mates to learn from each other based on different opinions and perspectives. Evidence shows that it contributes to greater achievement than competitive and individualistic learning styles. In order to make group work more effective; assign goals, explain task, monitor, asses and reflect within the group.

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Midterm Exam

On Thursday we will have our midterm exam. To prepare, review the class blog and your notes. You will need to be able to briefly define/summarize the neuroscience concepts we have explored:
  1. Growth vs. Fixed Mindset; 
  2. The Adolescent Brain; 
  3. How Poverty Affects the Brain; 
  4. Reading and Note Taking in the Digital Age; 
  5. Stereotype Threat; and 
  6. Neuro-plasticity. 
Strong summaries will include an example of an experiment described in the article or talk.

You will also need to be able to identify on a map the locations of the ancient schools we've visited and, in a sentence or two, describe the education system of each place and the purposes they served in their societies:
  1. The Eduba of Mesopotamia
  2. Greece (Athens and Sparta)
  3. The Imperial Examination System of China
  4. The Tēlpochcalli and the Calmecac of the Aztec Empire
The exam will not take up the entire class time, so we will continue to explore the materials you've found about cooperative learning in preparation for our research project.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Lots to Do!

Call to Action Reflection
Your post-flection (the concept formerly known as reflection) is due before Tuesday as a post of 150-200 words on your blog.
What did you learn about the value of service as a learning experience through your community
engagement activity on Call to Action Day? In what way did the activity give you opportunities to develop meaningful community with your community partner organization?
For a reminder of the specific expectations for this post or other posts that you are required to complete for the semester, you can review them on the Meta-Blog here.

Research Project
The next blog post is due following the November 3rd Freshman Research Conference, which begs the question, what is the research we are going to do and present at the conference?! As this is a seminar on how we learn, we are going to explore, as a class, the scholarship on cooperative research and/or cooperative learning.

For Tuesday's class, you will work with your partner to find two on-line articles (per team) that describe research related to cooperative learning or cooperative research practices at the college level. If you find something related to but not exactly on the topic that you think might be worth considering, you may include it. You must write a short summary (precise) of each article. Send the links to the articles along with your summaries to me before class on Tuesday.

Midterm Exam
Finally, we have a midterm exam on Thursday of next week. On Tuesday, we will review what you are expected to know for the exam. Check now to see what you might be missing from your notes. The class blog is a good place to review what we have covered so far, including links to videos like the one we watched today.

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Call to Action Day--A Three Hour Tour.....

Tuesday we are headed out to the Port of Redwood City to join a brace of 5th graders for an epic field trip aboard the Brownlee Research Vessel of the Marine Science Institute. Please eat lunch before gathering at noon on the quad to catch our coach to the dock. Remember to bring layers of clothing and wear close-toed shoes. Snacks and water will be provided. It's going to be GREAT!!!

For Thursday's class, we will explore neuroplasticity. Please watch this video, take some notes on it, and come ready to discuss it.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Aztec Schools: The Tēlpochcalli and the Calmecac

**Please register for Call to Action Day here: http://www.ndnu.edu/call-to-action/ **

So now you've checked out the education options of the Aztec empire. If you were living there then, what school would you go to, and what would you study?

For Thursday's class, read "Picture yourself as a stereotypical male," clicking on and exploring the links within the article, and answer 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.)
Please bring your written answers to class and be prepared for a thrilling discussion.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Welcome to the Chinese Imperial Examination

Today we explored the planet and expanded our neighborhood a little bit. Remember Hallmark #3: "We educate for and act on behalf of justice and peace in the world." Got to know the world if we're going to do that, right? So that's what NDNU educates for. What did the Chinese government educate for? There's a documentary series from China on the subject if you just can't get enough.

I've ordered small globe beach balls for the class, so we'll have something to play with next week, along with a visit to the Aztecs.


Now for Thursday's class, please read these two Scientific American articles on technology and education/learning, and answer the following questions (bring answers to class on Thursday).
  1. Cognitive Processes: What are you doing with information when you are taking notes by hand that you don't do when you are typing notes?
  2. What other dangers are there with using laptops in the classroom?
  1. What are the advantages of reading on paper over reading electronic publications?
  2. What are some explanations for the advantages?

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Welcome to Plato's Academy


So in our class, women are from Sparta, and men are from Athens. Next Tuesday, we'll visit ancient China and the imperial examination system. 

In the meantime, for Thursday's class, please read this article on how poverty affects brain development. Bring your written answers the following questions with you to class:
  1. "The Neuroscience of Poverty": List and describe the findings of three of the studies referenced in the article.
  2. Based on the new scientific information, what educational and social policy changes could be made, according to the article? Do you have any suggestions?
  3. The New Eugenics: What are the dangers of brain-poverty research without context?
  4. How does the information in this article relate to our Call to Action experience?
  5. Do you have any concerns about the article or the research it describes?



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Please also remember that you have ten required posts to your blog/portfolio due over the course of the semester. Please review the assignment here. You probably have already competed blog post #1. If you attended the block party or go to one of the events suggested in class today (creative writers workshop, soccer game, etc.), you can knock out #5 right away and not have to worry about that one.


Thursday, September 15, 2016

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 Tuesday's class, get ready to go to school in ancient Greece. Also please review this helpful article on how to write an analysis paper because that's what we are going to do next. The article is designed for an American literature course, but everything in it is relevant for analyzing other sorts of writing, or films, or art, or you name it.

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Welcome to the Eduba (Sumerian School)

Hope you all enjoyed making your own cuneiform tablets today. 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.
 
Before our next class, please make sure that you have completed all of the assignments posted on this blog.  The pace will pick up after this week, and catching up will get much harder. I will also be much less lenient about missed, late, or incomplete work going forward. Best of luck!

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Using Rubrics for Assessment and More

What are rubrics and how can they be used? Here are campus portal links to the rubrics that you will most often come across at NDNU:
Your assignment, due Tuesday, is to review the student essay you received in class today, using the written communication rubric above and the original prompt as your assessment guides. Mark up the essays with your comments and corrections as clearly and constructively as you can, and bring it to class with the completed rubric form.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Fixed vs Growth Mindset

What do you have a fixed mindset about? How can you promote a growth mindset in yourself and others?

Here's a link to the Ted Talk by Eduardo Briceno that we watched in class today. If you have 10 minutes, you might want to watch it again, or check out the Ted Talk by Carol Dwek, on "The power of believing that you can improve." Or check out the very clear article on the subject from New York Magazine: "How Not to Talk to Your Kids, The inverse power of praise," by Po Bronson.


Thursday, September 1, 2016

Dorothy Stang Essay

Your next dangerous assignment is to transform one of your summer reading question responses into a cogent, persuasive, thesis-driven full essay. It is due in class and in turnitin.com on Thursday, September 8th. The TurnItIn Class ID is 13420316, and the password is fye2016mf. The full prompt for the essay can be found on the campusportal.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Welcome to NDNU and First Year Seminar Blogging!

Before Thursday's class, please
  1. Sign up to receive email updates for this blog (see top of sidebar) >>>>
  2. Create your own blog by following the instructions found on the meta First Year Seminar blog
  3. Post your reflections on last Friday's Orientation Engagement Experience (OEE) or on our planned community engagement activity with our partners, the Marine Science Institute and the Ravenswood School, as follows:

    Choose one Hallmark you feel is particularly relevant to your OEE  or planned community engagement activity. Explain why this particular Hallmark seems relevant to you. Does the Hallmark express a value that resonates for you personally? (see links to Hallmarks and partners on sidebar).