A Night in the Global Village

Heifer International is a nonprofit group focused on raising awareness about underprivileged areas and ending world hunger. One of their learning facilities is located in Perryville, Arkansas at this facility students are able to experience a night in a third world situation. The locations represented are Guatemala, Thailand, Zambia, Generic Urban Slum and a Refugee Camp. Students are only given supplies that a family in this location would typically have on hand. It is up to the students to work as a group and trade and barter for supplies that other groups have access to. The must cook all their meals and clean the dishes, build fires and basic jobs other people living in these conditions would experience everyday. The students placed in the refugee camp are given no supplies and must beg for everything they need and are unable to communicate with their language. Some random students are given more challenging situations like pregnancy, and losing a limb.

This is a great way for students to really learn and understand poverty by living it and feeling what other people feel. However, unlike the people who this is just everyday experience students know they will receive food the following day. First hand experience is a great way to make hunger a real experience. Reading about poverty in a book and experiencing a taste of it is great to make students understand what it means. They come out being more empathetic people and feel a need to help people living in these places.

The Edible Schoolyard

The Edible Schoolyard is a project developed by Alice Waters a local chef in Berkley, California. Chef Waters developed the program to help urban students learn about where their food comes from. It was an idea originally to improve cafeteria lunches for the students and has since snowballed from there. Students have a one acre garden that they plant and weed and fertilize. They not only learn how to grow food but, they also learn teamwork and a since of community.

All academic courses are covered with the time spent working in the garden. And students who may not be the best math or science students but, work well with their hands now have an opportunity to shine. The garden provides students real life uses for the subjects they learn in the classroom and can now see how those skills are useful in the real world.

iTunes University

ITunes is a great educational tool for educators and students. With iPods the classroom can be taken anywhere a bench in a park, in the car, or riding a bus. IPods allow you to be able to listen to lectures and podcast anywhere anytime. ITunes University allows educators to publish their lectures and notes on iTunes and students are able to download them to their iPods and replay their lessons over and over.

Some universities have published all of their lectures and professor notes on iTunes so that students have access to them. Students are also able to download podcast to their iPods. Instructional videos can also be loaded to an iPod. The new 3g iPods are able to access Wi-Fi even if its location is not close.

In closing I think iTunes have great academic potential if educators can look past the entertainment aspect. Almost all electronic devices now have multi-purposes if we can look deeper than entertainment value. Computers were once for business purposes have now exploded with music video and gaming capabilities, yet we push schools into using them for learning and broadening our students’ horizons into the virtual classroom why not do the same with iPods. We as educators have to embrace all the new technologies ideas for our student’s sake.

Ipods for Education

IPods like many other technology advances do have academic advantages. However they of course can also be misused. Students can benefit from using IPods in the classroom. Students are able to keep a calendar and a recorder at the palm of their hand. They are able to down load pod cast and listen to them over and over. However many universities do not allow such electronic devices in their classrooms at all because you can also use the device to cheat on exams and projects.

A study recently conducted at Duke University studied the educational benefits IPods have in the classroom. 1,650 freshman students were given IPods to use in their field of study in and out of the classroom. Many of the students used the IPod calendar feature to help keep up with projects and test. Some other used the IPods as alarm clocks to help them to get to class on time. The rowing team used the IPods to recall their calls to the rowers to help with practices. So with all new technology ideas there are always pros and cons you just have to weight them yourself to see if the benefits out way the risk.

Dr. Alice Christie

Search Engines for Students

Dr. Alice Christie is an educator with over forty years of experience. She received her PhD in Educational Technology and Language and Literacy in 1995 from Arizona State University. Recently she retired from the College of Teacher Education and Leadership at Arizona State University. Before this she taught school for k-12. Now she tours the country doing educational workshops.

I particularly enjoyed the search engines for kids section it was particularly valuable. The internet is such a broad avenue that knowing which sites are useful and the ones that are not can be difficult and time consuming. What Dr. Christie has done is provided a list of kid friendly sites with a brief description of what is found on them. This is wonderful for other teachers to be able to locate the information they need quickly without having to sift through the junk sites.

Some of the sites she has listed is not only for classroom use but, also home use to help students with homework or just quiz on topics they are having trouble catching on to. I have saved this site to my favorites so I can easily reference it in the future. She has listed each site that she recommends is specific categories some are for students only others are for educators.

I hope everyone will take the time and really explore Dr.Christie’s site she has some great information that actually can be very useful in a classroom environment. I know exactly where to look now for research or just homework help for my students and I feel comfortable with these sites will actually enrich their learning experience as well as teach the internet navigation.