SCED 303h Blog

This blog is connected to SCED 303h: Teaching History at the Middle and Secondary Level at Northeastern Illinois University. Here students and their professor share reflections and have conversations regarding issues in Social Studies Education.

Friday, March 24, 2006

Welcome

Welcome to the SCED 303h BLOG.

The purpose of this blog is to pilot the use of the weblog as a tool for increasing audience and learning in the classroom. So here is the assignment.

I am asking you to log on to http://sced303hblog.blogspot.com and to post a reflection or a lesson you want to share. I am also asking you to comment on no less than three and no more than five posts per week. I will also post ideas and make comments. The idea is to help develop a community of learners.

I don't know how this will work so I am really looking for feedback from you. You may give me written feedback, feedback through e-mail or post feedback as a reflection on the blog.

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SCED 303h Blog

This blog is connected to SCED 303h: Teaching History at the Middle and Secondary Level at Northeastern Illinois University. Here students and their professor share reflections and have conversations regarding issues in Social Studies Education.

Northeastern Illinois University

Curriculum and Instruction
National Council for the Social Studies
Library of Congress

Digital History

American Historical Association Resources for Teachers

Before you finish eating breakfast this morning, you've depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured...We aren't going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
John F. Kennedy

From our perspective, the desire to avoid controversy leads to one of the most serious weaknesses in the discussion of history--the refusal to admit that all history is interpretive. Those who defend the status quo portray their version as the "real" story (because it's already in the textbooks) and condemn all other interpetations as somehow weakening the "truth" of American history. Given that these arguments are usually made by precisely those people who benefit most from ignoring issues of race, class, and gender, that position is hardly suprising. But if schools are to prepare students for active citizenshop in a democracy they can neither ignore controversy nor teach students to accept passively somenoe else's historical interpretations.
Linda S. Levstik & Keith C. Barton, Doing History: Investigating with Children in Elementary and Middle Schools.

The future has always been the great treasure-house of meaning. People everywhere, dissatisfied with naked experience, have clothed the present with signs of things to come. They have found clues in the lives of sacrifical animals, in the flight of birds, in the movements of the planets, in their own dreams and sneezes.
Daniel J. Boorstin, The Seekers: The Story of Man's Continuing Quest to Understand His World