Having looked at the academic and social/political issues around year round schooling, I think it is also appropriate to discuss some personal issues with year round schooling. To do this, let’s suppose we were to agree that all the academic and political issues around year round schooling are neutral: there are no academic gains or losses, and no differences in financials. The question, then, is how personal opinions and preferences play into it.
In my previous post, I looked at some of the research and academic arguments around year round schooling. In today’s post, I want to comment on some of the social issues around year round schooling and how it might affect our communities.
I was born in a small town in BC, and growing up I had a healthy relationship with the outdoors. I have hiked many trails and kilometers in the Rockies, the Purcells and West Coast Range.
This is the first part in a 3 part series that I’m writing on what I believe are the reasons to stay away from year-round schooling in British Columbia. Through various initiatives, such as the BC Education Plan and local interest by school boards, we have the beginnings of a shift from our traditional September to June school calendar to a “year round” calendar. The specifics of how a year round calendar would work are not set, and the BC Ministry of Education has passed legislation that makes it easier for each school district to set their own calendar.
Last week I had my first try at implementing Problem Based Learning (PBL) in physics. We were about to study Heat Energy and it seemed like a natural fit for presenting an authentic problem. I chose to make a scenario that was based on my previous work as a mechanical engineer. Have a look below…
PBL - Heat Energy
From what I understand, PBL should be based on authentic situations where the solution is non-obvious such that the students need to engage their meta-cognition.
Our class time at school has been pretty messed up in the past week or two. Job action restricted class hours and then last week we missed three days due to the strike. This was followed by two days of classes, but they were compromised because of the upcoming 2 week spring break (which we’re in right now). Many students were absent and it’s difficult to start a new topic at this time, which is exactly what I’ve wanted to do for the past 2 weeks.
I just came across a funny article from the CBC. It is a short piece about how high school students feel unprepared for university. Granted, it’s not supposed to be funny but the irony in it really hits home to me. Some of the startling revelations made the students in the article include:
the amount of work done in high school is less than that in university the quality of work done in high school is less than that in university self-motivation is a big issue in university I’m surprised they didn’t also point out that the students at university are usually older and more mature than high school students.
An issue I’m struggling with is whether a science classroom should allow cell phones to be used a calculator. It’s a pretty complex issue with lots of different aspects coming into play. A brief list of pros/cons is:
Pros
smartphones are powerful computers and can be utilized sometimes people forget to bring calculators to class (human error) one less device to carry, charge, pay for Cons
difficult if not impossible to discern between a student that is using a smartphone as a calculator as opposed to using their smartphone for messaging removes the teachable moment of a student having a consequence for not coming to class prepared possibility of cheating on a test or quiz complex rules that will lead to abuse: smartphone ok for class but not test; ok to use if you forget your calculator but don’t make it a habit I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this issue.
I’ve been incorporating “clicker” questions into my physics classes this year, and so far I would say it’s been a success. There are ups and downs while using them, but overall the process is working pretty good. However, yesterday’s class really got me thinking about how to optimize my process.
First of all, here is a brief on how I use clicker questions in class. We don’t have clickers. Instead, I’ve been using Poll Everywhere.
As our education system moves towards an Education 3.0 paradigm, where student-generated content takes a large step forward, I see collective intelligence and current educational silo structures moving strongly in the direction of free access to subject content. To do this, political stake holders will have to give up their hold and control of exactly what it is that our children learn.
From an educational design point of view, these changes have begun.
In the past year or two I had heard quite a bit about teachers and classrooms that were using wikis. For me, at the time I saw “using a wiki” as being analogous to creating wikipedia-like entries. I wasn’t sure as to this was applicable to to all the scenarios I was hearing about. Then a few months ago I took over some Physics classes where the previous teacher was using a wikispaces.
