Related sites to Humsteach blog
Spatialworlds
Australian Curriculum Portal
Geogaction
DECD Learning Resources for Australian Curriculum
DECD Achievement Standards Charts
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
Geography Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of Australia
Scoop.it
My Top 10 to check out
I thought I
would have a play at checking out some sites of interest and use for the
humanities classroom and then try to make a top 10 list. I am sure that
the creative teacher could integrate them into a humanities
lesson of worth.
Well, here is my top 10 for this week.
Number 1: The Traveler IQ Challenge. Great fun learning places and their location. Try it!
Number 2: Tony Cassidy has compiled a great list of online Social Studies games.
Number 3: Culture Crossing is
a unique resource for information about different countries. It
provides some basic demographics, but it also shares details about
communication style, dress, gestures, etc. It’s unlike any other source
of information about countries on the web.
Number 4: Photos that changed the world – great visuals to explore visual literacy.
• Camera Naked’s.
• Neatorame
• Jonathan Klein: Photos that changed the world is a new “TED Talk”.
Number 5: What The World Eats,
an online slideshow from Time magazine that shows families from fifteen
different countries, along with what they eat during one week and its
cost. This site can be used to initiate a discussion on economic
inequities; use in compare/contrast activities – great for the Year 9
Food topic of the Australian Curriculum: Geography.
Number 6: The Zero Footprint Kids Calculator: It would be difficult to develop a more accessible web tool for people to figure out their own ecological footprint.
Number 7: Geographical Media is an interesting site to develop media literacy and also collect data for some mapping of media coverage.
Number 8: Map Battle is a very easy-to-use tool to create geography games online.
Number 9: Geobeats is a huge collection of short travel videos from around the world.
Number 10: Visual Geography is
a nice site with images, information, and quizzes about 85 countries
around the world. The quizzes on each country are good, as is the
feature called “Compare.” You can pick any two countries and easily
compare their demographic data with a click of the mouse.
How does a Humanities education help us to make sense of these two images?
Related sites to Humsteach blog
Spatialworlds
Australian Curriculum Portal
Geogaction
DECD Learning Resources for Australian Curriculum
DECD Achievement Standards Charts
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
Geography Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of Australia
Scoop.it
* Course details on FLO
THE THREAT OF FOCUSSING ON UTILITARIAN EDUCATION
With
today’s global competition, there is increasing concern about the
nature and quality of education– should it be primarily practical and utilitarian
and equipping students to be competitive in the workforce or should it
rather a liberal education with broad ideas and values to prepare a
well-rounded student with the capacity to be fully functional democratic citizens,
prepared for life in contemporary society? For students to be
successful in today’s global economy, it should be seen that utilitarian
and liberal education need to be tightly coupled, and that students’
academic, developmental, interpersonal and experiential lives are
entwined. Schools should move towards developing transformational
learning for students and not just focus on providing knowledge and
understandings based on employability. Such questioning of the
utilitarian trend in education around the world is critical when we
consider the decrease in curriculum time for humanities in schools and
the significant drop off in the number of students studying geography in
particular in the senior school in Australia and around the world.
“Transformational learning
means that the “whole student” has to develop so as to prepare him or
her as a thinker and citizen for a challenging world; to question and
affirm or change what she or he believes; and come to a greater
understanding of the complex questions of his or her own life and the
lives of others than they otherwise would. By attending to both leads to
transformational learning and the development of the whole person into a
flourishing individual and citizen.”
Traditionally in our school system the humanities’ (history, geography, studies of society etc) have developed those capacities referred to as liberal education.
Ironically, it was the liberal subjects that dominated early education!
In the present economic and educational environment the humanities in
the senior school are being devalued and squeezed out of the curriculum
in face of utilitarian demands. In Australia the humanities is declining in schools in
terms of numbers, prestige and general influence. Many young people now
leave school with a scant knowledge of history, geography and our
society in general (law, government etc). The impact is particularly
serious in the senior secondary year that provides a sophisticated understanding of the humanities for young people. The utilitarian demands on a young person when choosing subjects has resulted in significant reduction of the perceived ‘non employment direct’ subjects such as history, geography
etc (in fact these subjects do have significant and much needed career
pathways but often not seen as direct and thus not promoted as getting a
student a job). As this blog has highlighted and discussed over the
past 4 years, the opportunities in the spatial industry
is enormous and subjects such as geography and history have an
important role to play in developing student knowledge, skills and
capacities in-line with the needs of that industry.
Australians
hold what appear to be conflicting aspirational and practical notions
of the purposes and value of a schooling. Economists and corporate
leaders refer to this function of education as the development of human
capital.
“…education is more than preparing for a job;
it should be for acquiring the knowledge, skills, competencies, values,
dispositions and capacities for many life roles in a world of
inevitable change and that this is ultimately the more “practical”
preparation for life.”
Anecdotally
the trend away from the liberal humanities in school education, towards
the demands of a utilitarian education, in particular in senior
secondary, is common throughout the western world and similar OECD
countries to Australia. There is a need to get quantitative and
substantiated data on the trend away from the humanities and to research
what other countries are doing to arrest the trend away from the
humanities as highly respected (in number and prestige) subjects in
schools. Those involved in humanities education consider that the trend
away from the humanities towards utilitarian education in our schools
(and universities) is undermining and threatening the development of a
‘well-rounded, thinking, socially analytical young citizen ready for the
demands of the 21st Century globalised world.
Here
are two really interesting articles from the UK re: importance of
geography and diminishing numbers. Seems that the drift to utilitarian
education is happening everywhere. Geographers need to be strategic and
work towards reversing this trend.
1. "Without geography, the world would be a mystery to us"
Geography is the subject that contributes more than any other to young people’s knowledge of the world, writes David Lambert.
2. "History and geography 'diminishing' in schools", says head
Subjects
such as English, history and geography are being marginalised as
schools ditch academic rigour in favour of “accessibility”, according to
a leading headmistress.
The
irony is that geography and the associated spatial technology tools it
uses are seen as a non-vocational area of study and just a nice subject
to do for those interested. As this blog repeatedly highlights,
geography is a great humanities subject for young people to do as
citizens now and in the future but it also is a subject with increasing vocational opportunities in
the branches of geography (climatology, economic analysis, planning,
environmental management, disaster mitigation etc etc) and the related areas of the spatial industry which continues to say that they have a human resources shortage. Geography is also a subject which goes somewhere in the world of
employment. There is a lot of work to be done with subject counselors,
vocational consultants, parents and the community to get the message
across that geography and all the knowledge, skills and capacities it
develops in young people is and should be promoted as a learning area with great (and increasing) vocational opportunity.
Related sites to Humsteach blog
Spatialworlds
Australian Curriculum Portal
Geogaction
DECD Learning Resources for Australian Curriculum
DECD Achievement Standards Charts
Australian Geography Teachers' Association website
Geography Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of South Australia
History Teachers Association of Australia
Scoop.it
* The PowerPoint for the first tutorial on week beginning 23 February 2015
* 24 February Curriculum Frameworks lecture
* Course details on FLO
* Reading template to be completed each week
This posting explores the issue of where students as learners have changed. Is there such a thing as a 21st Century learner? The research indicates that
there is! If we are on about developing a 21st Century curriculum then
we must take into account that the learner has changed and think about
how the curriculum may be different to accommodate these changes.
These changes may be categorised under the headings of what they require and expect and what they are interested in.
*They require and expect:
• not to have to learn “by rote” knowledge.
• They recognize that knowledge is important but not to be expected to learn chunks of deep knowledge
• respect from their teachers. They consider respect needs to be ‘earnt’ by their teachers
• to learn the skills of knowledge acquisition, analysis and synthesis
• to develop a taste of the ethos and frameworks of disciplines.
•
relevance of learning to their life. They ask how the curriculum
delivered will prepare them for the real world whilst they are at school
and when they leave. They expect real world competencies through their
learning
• the freedom to personalise/customise their learning/tasks to meet their personal needs
• their learning to be flexible, self reliant and autonomous
• new technologies to be available to support their learning and collaborative work
• to work collaboratively in the real and virtual space
• be able to meet achievement standards if they work as required
• the opportunity to study in depth a topic/issue they find of interest
• connectivity with their life and their learning experiences.
* They are interested in:
• issues of social justice
• real stories
• connecting with others in the real and virtual space
• using current technology to learn – in particular to enhance connectivity
• being active citizens and make a difference
• embracing cross-cultural competencies – sensitivity to other cultures
• greenness and sustainability through real ecologically responsible acts
• being global in outlook – citizens of the world
• customising their education to their needs – personal pathways
• being a resourceful learner, curious, enquiring, community relevant and learning
beyond the school day.
