Authentic explanation

Many think of Buddhism as a very generic term, but there are many different kinds of Buddhism. Teaching World Religions in Thailand, the most Buddhist nation on earth, it was important that my students understand that there are different branches of Buddhism. Students had an assignment to compare and contrast two forms of Buddhism. The following video is part of that assignment. I love how authentic this is - the students going to the source for their information.

Summer break?

It has been a while since I've posted. I can blame jet lag, learning, and a bit of summer relaxing, but it is not for lack of reflection.

What have I been doing since school let out? I've been doing a lot of learning. I'm taking an online course for my state certification. My MEd was done totally online, so the formal online university class is not new to me, but this particular university's method of online learning totally fails to take advantage of the medium and the opportunities. I'm sure, though, that it's easy (and boring) for the instructor to grade.

My MEd was through University of Maryland University College and had an emphasis on information technology. I was not enthralled with that program at the time, but now when I compare it to the class I am currently enrolled in, UMUC did a fantastic job. I won't name the class I'm in now, but it's static. The whole thing might be better characterized as a correspondence course that has been thrown online than an online course. We are required to post in a forum and to make a remark on "at least one other student's post" per week, but there is no substantial discussion going on. One of the problems is that the timing of the class is very leisurely. We have two deadlines for the 12 week period - one at mid-term and a second for the final exam. This makes the interaction going on in the forums minimal.

I have also been doing a lot of learning on my own. I'm still fairly new to twitter and when I returned to the US two weeks ago, my new iPad was waiting for me. This little device is more impressive than I had hoped for it to be. Some time is spent each day exploring new apps or learning how to use those I have more effectively.

As far as twitter, I'm still learning how to interact with people on this amazing network. There is so much information available from so many angles. It's important not to follow only those people you agree with, but those who have different takes, to challenge you. Stepping in mid-stream takes some getting used to. I'm quite introverted, so the tweeting with strangers still feels awkward to me. This is a feeling I should keep in mind as I think about using twitter in my classroom. How will my ESL students feel? Or my introverts?

Finally, next Sunday I leave for ISTE11 in Philadelphia. Keeping up with all of the advice for ISTE newbies is itself a bit daunting.

As I review these summer learning opportunities, only two weeks into summer, I wonder what the next great thing will be? Where will technology be in 10 years? Twenty years? Fifty or a hundred? I see my own parents sometimes struggle to master new technology (even parking meters) and hear their opinions about social networks. I wonder how hard and how long my generation will have to work to keep up? Can we ever keep pace with the change? If we - or even a group of us - perhaps an underprivileged group- can't keep up even moderately with the pace of change, what does that mean for society as a whole?

Nerds versus zombies in the classroom

Stories can be powerful things. Right now I'm reading Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Miller's story recounts what he learned during the process of turning one of his books into a screenplay. Miller learned that his life was like a story. And if life is the story and the story has meaning, then life has meaning.

This is one reason why last year I often asked my students to create their own stories to illustrate ideas. Several students usually turned in movies. My movie-makers were not the students who typically got noticed. They were not the athletes or the academics. They were kids that seemed otherwise ordinary but who had an amazing ability to see meaning in stories and camera angles.

In the following film, my students addressed the issue of good verses evil and why there is evil in the world. Their answer is abstract and they did have to explain the video to bring it into the concrete, but focus on the idea that one man, Dr. Barislov, introduced the zombie virus into the world and you will see a somewhat Judeo-Christian idea of why there is evil in the world in their story.

And who doesn't like a good nerd versus zombie movie now and again.

Shining as digital natives

This video is from my Intro to Philosophy class last fall. The assignment was to create a story containing a unique moral dilemma. Students then had to present three different philosophical perspectives on the moral dilemma. The story portion and the analysis portion were not required to be in the same format, so this group chose to present their story via video and their analysis in writing. What I loved about this group's work is how well they captured the feeling of a dilemma. They shined as digital natives capturing the emotional power of their story with music, lighting, action and acting.

Let them make cakes

Students analyzing cakes.

Inspired at the beginning of this year by Kevin Simpson's talk about differentiated instruction and my return to teaching World Religions, I wanted my students to communicate ideas in creative ways that would demonstrate their synthesis and analysis of information in the way best suited to their own skills rather than simply showing me that they know how to use google. To facilitate this, I encouraged students to work with stories or images they created and to analyze these products in terms of our content. As the year progressed, I became more relaxed about the type of projects students turned in so long as they demonstrated their own mastery of the topics. In a moment of pure genius (or insanity - you choose), I told one class that they could even bake a cake for their project.

It was a bit of a surprise one morning to have students deliver two cakes to my classroom. These were not ordinary cakes. These were Buddhism cakes!

In the picture on the left, the cake in the front represents Pureland Buddhism. Pureland focuses on calling on the name of the Amida Buddha for entrance to the "Pureland." Those who enter the Pureland can then travel between realms (symbolized by the ladder on the cake) to assist those left on earth.

Students demonstrate self-control not immediately
devouring their classmates' project.

In the picture on the right, the cake represents Theravada Buddhism. Buddha is represented by the orange figure meditating in the middle of the cake (though upside down in the image). Four brown candles standing up in the cake represent the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism and the eight brown sticks (known here as Pocky - essentially a type of coated pretzel) represent the Noble Eighfold Path of Buddhism.

Class started by having the students come to the front of the room and examine the cakes. The class was able to tell our cake bakers what type of symbolism (more than mentioned above) they saw in the cakes. We then had our bakers tell us a bit more about the cakes (because we didn't really know what they would truly be like until we sliced into them where there was more content to analyze) and as a final reward for a job well done, we all shared in a great feast and consumed the student projects.