Halstead, Blog Post 2

Overview: In his introduction, Loewen writes extensively about the textbooks that have, ironically, aided in making American students worse at history. The purpose of his book is to aim at pieces of history mistaught, or completely glazed over. Also in the introduction of Lies My Teacher Told Me, Loewen writes about the hatred of and underperformance in American history, particularly by students of color. The first chapter focuses on what Loewen calls "heroification", or the reduction of varied and complex historical actors like Woodrow Wilson (top) and Helen Keller (bottom, right) to palatable, inoffensive archetypes. In my screencast, I highlight how it is not just textbooks that should make us wary of this oversimplification.
Screencast: Screencast 2
Big Question:  Is the internet an effective tool for combatting "heroification" in history?
Interactive Link: The link I chose is part of a PBS series of videos called "60 Second Presidents". It is a video series that covers all of the presidents so far and does so in short blurbs. I discuss why this is useful but also problematic in my screencast. https://illinois.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/d6cdb0ae-6a88-4aac-b163-ee1aab3d51ff/woodrow-wilson-60-second-presidents/?#.W4Shd85KiUk

Halstead, Blog Post 1

Overview: The image above is a useful graphic for understanding the component parts of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy. This system, based on Bloom's original taxonomy of the 1950's, is one of many systems that have been developed to effectively guide student learning and understanding like the ones described in our first chapter. Each system is particularly relevant to education because they focus on the ways in which students learn, and stress that every learner is unique in some way. Many of the systems also focus on different learning outcomes that are part of Bloom's overall taxonomy. For example, Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences centers on the ways in which students acquire knowledge, while McCarthy's 4MAT system focuses on the mental functions students use to achieve the creation of a product. I highlight how each learning model fits within Bloom's taxonomy in my screencast below.

Screencast: Screencast 1

Big Question: How, and to what extent do various theories of learning and intelligence interact?

Interactive Website: The website I chose is a page from Edutopia.com that has a quiz to assess which of Gardner's Multiple Intelligences a person uses most. This quiz would likely be most useful in a mobile-device enabled classroom, where each student could take the quiz and send the instructor their results. It can be found at the following link: https://www.edutopia.org/multiple-intelligences-assessment

Additional link to University of Iowa's Bloom's Taxonomy Page: http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/effective-teaching-practices/revised-blooms-taxonomy