Spreadsheets on FIRE: How I would integrate Excel into the Classroom

In accordance with the ISTE NETS guidance for integrating technology into the classroom with a student centered approach, I've identified a couple of novel ways to use spreadsheets in a Social Studies/History Class context. Both exercises are statistically based. The first exercise would need substantial refitting to be compatible for the Ohio DOE Social Studies Academic Content Standards.

First off is the interesting exercise called "An Unusual Incident", from the Queensland public school system. The exercise entails the study of data organized on a spreadsheet to discern what patterns are evident in the data that would identify the specific incident.

While this exercise doesn't entail the explicit usage of Excel but rather a pre-made spreadsheet, it could be adapted to be an "example", before allowing the students (in groups, or individually) to create their own data sets surrounding an incident they've studied recently (a Civil War battle, population patterns in the first year after the implementation of the Homestead Act, etc.). Upon completion, the groups could exchange their data sets (created with Excel) with each other, in order to try and guess the event.

Second, is an interesting exercise called the Amazing Autobiography, and is brought to us by the Microsoft Corporation. Though the Amazing Autobiography is meant to be a language arts exercise, if adapted, it could help address Ohio Benchmark Standards that require comparative thinking, such as the guidance set forth in Benchmark/Indicator C (Gr. 9-10) ("Analyze the connections between World War II, the Cold War and contemporary conflicts").

The Amazing Autobiography is originally intended to help students understand narrative writing, first by examining the autobiographies of famous personages, and then following suit using Excel and Powerpoint as media for a similar presentation.

The Excel component requires students to map out their own lives, with a timeline composed of Milestones from their own lives.

This could be adapted into a Social Studies history (for example) by having the students map out the lives of John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev, and Ho Chi Minh- to see what types of milestones occurred in each of their lives, providing perhaps some type of basis for a further discussion on how formative events shaped their personalities and leadership styles.

Furthermore, Excel timeline mapping could track the shape of conflicts, and be "superimposed" on the governmental policy decisions of the Superpowers to show how future conflicts are shaped. For example, regarding Kennedy, The Bay of Pigs failure could be linked to a weakening of the relationship between the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and the President (POTUS). This could then be coupled with a timeline measurement of the strengthening between the relationship of the POTUS the Secretary of Defense (SecDef)...and could also be used as a basis for comparison to examine how decision making processes occurred between the JCS, SecDef and POTUS in regards to the planning of tail end, and post-Cold War conflicts, such as the Operation Eagle Claw (Iranian hostage rescue attempt), Grenada, the American intervention in the Kosovo conflict, and the planning of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom I.

P.S.(Not to mention tracking how Soviet policy in Afghanistan from the Cold War on up, partially created the conditions for the accession of the Taliban.)

P.P.S.! (Also! You could track milestones of diplomatic engagement between the USA, USSR and the Middle East from WWII through to right now! Tengo el entusiasmo! )




OK. It's a bit of a stretch, but I'm sure with some planning, it could work.

See you in class,
H

Down in the Deep, Dark, Mines: Technology among the Classrooms of St. Pancake High

(St. Pancake High is a pseudonym for the inner-city Catholic high school where I had my pre-pre-student teaching placement last semester. I gave it a pseudonym so I could use constructive criticism without restraint. I call it "St. Pancake High", because My father's second wife grew up in that neighborhood, and during the 1980's, we often joined her father there for the school's annual pancake breakfast.)

This post will examine and address the integration of technology at St. Pancake High School, in the light of the National Education Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T).

By the time I'd started pre-pre-student teaching at St. Pancake High, I had only visited one school- an affluent private school for girls- that had any significant infusion of technology within the classroom. Obviously, the parents, alumni, administration and staff of The Plaid Skirt School for Girls (another pseudonym) were enthusiastically onboard with technology. Suffice to say, computer labs and laptops were abundant. Unfortunately I didn't get much of a chance to observe how they were integrated into the academic life of the school.

The other schools I'd observed were an urban/suburban school with absolutely no apparent technological integration in the classroom, save a VCR and a television for video viewing, and an inner-city school with at least a smattering of desktop computers scattered throughout the school, and one (small) dedicated lab.

Therefore you can imagine my shock when on my first day at St. Pancake, where I observed a class on the Jazz-Age, interactively taught to them by video-conference by a professor at a nearby music conservatory. WOW. Did I mention the interactivity? Despite some of the technical glitches the conservatory professor was leading a regular class- she was asking "guided inquiry" types of questions trying to provoke the students to apply what they'd been taught about the era, and fielded questions with a depth commensurate with her academic pedigree.

All of the classrooms at St. Pancake had at least one desktop computer per teacher, a Smartboard and laptops available for class projects, of which I only witnessed the class conduct two projects.

The laptops were kept in a rolling, locked cabinet in the hallway. While I am not sure how computer-time was allotted to the teachers, I assume there must have been a sign-up sheet or something to allow for the deconfliction of scheduling problems.

The first assignment I witnessed was a research project. The students were tasked with finding information in order to augment a multi-class inter-disciplinary project combining theological and historical information. I admit I was not paying too much attention at how the teacher managed the experience; however I did help a one particular student conduct his research by asking him a series of questions on how to re-frame his search criteria after his initial queries were unsuccessful in unearthing information relevant to his task.

The second project involved the students working through an interactive interface on a history website about the Industrial Revolution. The students were given a handout, and were tasked with navigating through the multimedia interface in small groups, to discover the meaning of certain terms and historical facts. The page itself "simulated" a descent into a mine, and was perhaps very instructive in that the students learned (through coupling information with imagery) about the limits and capabilities of Industrial Revolution-era technology in raw material extraction. The teacher's involvement was "minimal" during the class-period- allowing the students to go about the task with light guidance- but all of his pedagogical work was mostly in his pre-evaluation of the website and the development of the handout to guide the students through the project. The handout of course, was the assessment tool through which he could gauge the efficacy of the how the website provided information relevant to the curriculum he was tasked with teaching.

For me personally, the availability of technology in the classroom was indispensable. I created a series of power-point presentations which I utilized during lessons. On the negative side, I believe I may have become too dependent on their usage, but on the positive side, I've found that coupling information with imagery was a highly successful way of getting a complex point across (however, I don't have any "control group" information to compare it to). For example, during a lesson on Imperialism, I had the students analyze and assess a Kipling poem, and two cartoons from Punch contemporary to the era. Though I have no way of evaluating this statement, I believe that had they not had a series of visuals and snippets of information flashing away on the Smartboard, they may not have internalized as much information as quickly if I had been droning away without it. During the seatwork which I integrated into the lesson, they certainly demonstrated they had processed what I'd presented.

Though scant, I believe "my" students and I had a positive experience with integrating technology and curriculum. I dread having to go out into the real world and running the risk of not being able to work at a school with a minimal amount of technology in the classroom.

I used the cartoon above- from Punch, 21 April, 1894, to encourage the students at St. Pancake to look for evidence of paternalism evident in the popular mind of Britain, in its acquisition of new colonies.

PSYOPS and InfoWar: Beyond Tactical Leafleting.

We all know that the center of gravity for any irregular conflict is the effort to seperate the population from the terrorists...

In this threat environment that's an extremely tall order given that the opposing force(s) have demands that are diametrically opposed to our foreign policies (the existence of Israel, energy security) and fundamentals of our society (personal freedom) how do we seperate an Islamic world largely hostile to American behavior, and firmly entrenched in their belief systems, from even tacit support of terrorism?

Is there any prescription for success? Can we adress any of the issues of the Islamic world that fuel terrorism?

Are we even trying?

Early in the GWOT, the Dept. of State attempted to push public diplomacy initiatives that would spread education in the Islamic world, but the effort was underfunded and it lingers in obscurity.

I guess the big question is, are there any success stories with Islamic world countries "de-radicalizing" adherents to Jihadist philosophies?

Do you have any ideas? Discuss!

M-16 /M4 v. the 416

Any of you folks up on the M-16 vs. HK416 debate?

Essentially, the firing mechanism for the M4 (designed originally for the M-16) has been reviled since it's inception. At bottom, the mechanism enables significant carbon fouling in the barrel, which promotes frequent jamming. One Silver Star winner (OIF I) had to surrender to Iraqi Troops because his M-16 kept jamming at critical moments, and eventually became inoperable.

Recently a US Army Special Forces battalion caused a huge brouhaha because it announced it's intentions to procure upper receiver assemblies (designed for the HK416) to modify their M4's that are infinitely more reliable than the M-16's 40 year old technology. Trials show that these 416 assemblies can pump out thousands and thousands more rounds before failure.

Shouldn't regular grunts be afforded the same luxury?

Should we balk at spending $1BLN on something extremely practical, while we pump funding into fighter aircraft for dogfights that aren't happening right now?

I'm all for staying a generation ahead of any peer competitor in air combat...but I think we could sacrifice a jump in air-to-air combat capability, to switch out our fleet of crappy rifle upper receiver assemblies. (It's not even a new gun! It's just the freakin' assembly!)

Discuss.

Remember, I heard it first in The Danger Room.

The 416 in action...(I think the "functionality issues" one of the evaluators was discussing regarded the trade-off of range and muzzle velocity that was lost with the transition from the long-barrel M-16 to the short-barrel M4. If I remember correctly, that was the big reason the Marines retained the M-16 as their service rifle...if the 416 could redress that issue...wow...)

Iran and Nukes

Iran doesn't seem to be concerned with conventional means of deterrence...Does that mean our sub fleet is useless? Why keep pumping millions unt millions (billions?) of dollars into a weapons platform that was designed with a Cold War threat environment template in mind?

Do you really think it's keeping the Chinese or North Koreans in check?

Discuss! Please! Enquiring minds want to know what's on your mind!

Yo!

Yo, yo, YO!