CURR 501 Summer Session

 Building a Classroom Worth Learning In  When Dr. Michael Wesch started his talk with the acknowledgement that the classroom is not the real world I was hit with every disagreement I had ever had with others in education.  I am not a disagreeable person, but I strongly believe that our current education system does not work to encourage active student learning. Dr. Wesch's talk shows exactly why this is:  While watching his son, George, learn to walk Wesch saw the learning process in its most pure form: trial and error. Wesch saw that his son, who had fallen at least 50 times, continued to rise and try again. From this observation he saw that for learning to take place students must fail without fear of repercussion, feel connected, believe in themselves and their ability to accomplish goals, as well as be excited.  Wesch then took this knowledge and made an action plan: he began to reimagine how the grading system should look. Instead of the grading syste...

  It is more than complicated ...  There is a pervasive feeling in schools that our students know more about technology than we do. They must, right? 95% of their conversations seem to be rooted in technology: TikTok, 2k, Instagram. So then why is it when we pull up a GoogleDoc in class they are unable to copy and paste a table?  Marc Prensky, an American education author, popularized the term 'digital natives' to describe students who were born into the digital age. He described them as the perfect students for a technology based classroom- parallel processors who prefer random access over step by step and are more connected.  While in 2001 when he first published his work, this meant students had access to bulky computers and Nintendo Game Cubes, today's youth are living with a very different  level of access to technology. Ipads, XBoxes, smart phones: the whole world in their pockets. However, as Danah Boyd points out, this access does not really mean th...

  About Me      My name is Alex Hanna and I teach  8th grade science at AF PAMS! I started my life in Michigan (Go BLUE!), and then moved to Georgia. Since then I have lived in Texas, Washington, and now Rhode Island. I recently graduated with my M.S. in Inorganic Chemistry, but have found my passion teaching my kiddos! I am am an openly pansexual woman, who has been enjoying working in a state that offers me job protections. Aside from teaching I love reading, watching Sci-Fi classics (Next Gen, anyone?), and attempting to cook.