Sunday, February 22, 2015

Some great sites for Hums but how ...



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.

Saving the Humanities





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.

21st Century Hums


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.