Exam+1_Philip


 * * 1. Watch (Michigan State University's) [|Principles of Place-Based Education] (20 minutes) list three key points then explain how place-based education is said to differ from environmental education, and how it realizes John Dewey's arguments about what education should accomplish. || In the Michigan State University, //Principles of Place-Based Education//, several key features of placed-based learning were highlighted as a new and innovative way to educate students. One of the main points highlighted was a move away from the traditional mode of education which rose to prominence from the 1960s which focuses on an isolated relationship between the school and community. The emphasis in place based learning is a move to a dynamic relationship between the school and the community. This emphasis on dynamic relationships is meant to increase the active participation of students in the surrounding community and help student recognize tangible connections between subject matter and the community. Similarly, a second point of place based learning is that the immediate school and community is meant to serve as a matrix for all subject areas. Place based learning is meant to act as an integration of subject matter such as math, language arts, social studies, ect by tying subject matter back immediate examples in the community or school. The logic behind this teaching style is that students learn better if all of their work is done in the context of local, and immediate real world subject matter. Essentially, place based learning should be a basket for all of the curriculum. A third main point is that place based learning is meant to improve active citizenry of students as well as learning subject matter, and in doing so help them become better citizens not just at their school, but at a community and governmental level. By tying in the school to the community, and the community to the school, which can essentially be thought of as the same, there is a greater chance for students to become actively involved and have the information to make better and more well informed decisions. These three elements differ largely from traditional environmental education which focuses on a very streamlined teaching medium. Environmental education, much like an add-on or art curriculum, where demos or 50 minute interludes from an expert consists of much of the teaching medium, place based learning is meant to be a continuous and developing process for students to learn about wider relationships to all subject matter. Instead of the traditional narrative of providing information in an isolated designation, place based learning focuses on the permeation of subject matter through all aspects of education, and allows students to learn about bigger problems far away. The approach of having a broader understanding or big picture approach to subject matter and the encouragement of activism on the part of the student recognizes John Dewey’s vision of schools as laboratories for education. Place base learning offers students the opportunity to practice civic action, and environmental conservation within the school, local, and larger state and federal community. By having students actively involved in curriculums that reflect real life examples and problems, students are able to practice and refine real world skills that are actively tied to problems in the community at a school and local level. This helps students become more active stewards of the environment and more active participants in communities at any level. ||
 * * 2. Describe the design and purpose behind the design of the [|//The Druk White Lotus School//] (Ladakh, India) (25 minute film) then describe what the built features and daily life within a "culturally inflected" green school building in the United States would be like (drawing inspiration from the Druk White Lotus School). || The design and purpose behind the Druk White Lotus school was to create a school that offered modern education, but preserved the local culture in creating and maintaining the facilities there within. In the Druk White Lotus, there was an emphasis on using the school buildings to function in a modern way but incorporating as often as possible local traditions, local materials, and designs. In the case of the local populous, there was an emphasis on Buddist design which centers on sustainable design, frugal resource usage, and maintaining the social values of Buddhism. Elements such as good day light, heating, cultural spaces, water conservation, space utilization, and local materials all played large roles in the layout of the school. If the model of Druk White Lotus were to be applied to a green school in the United States, several key goals would be similarly addressed. First there would be an emphasis on using local materials and social resources to manage a school facility. Second, to design the school facility with energy and resource conservation in mind, including energy, and water, but ensuring the school is maintained with respect to local customs and traditions. Modern education should be provided within a facility that has the criteria of using local resources, and sustainable practices, while maintaining the culture and identity of the local populous. Features of these facilities might include having a community garden, rainwater catchment systems for water conservation, solar panels for energy, energy and light conscious building designs, open spaces for community meetings or play areas, and a composting pile for human waste or food scraps. Having interactive features would also be a key part to maintaining the active participation of students in the welfare of the community and school. In this case having students take care of the garden, check rainwater levels, clean solar panels, compiling food scraps would be important to ensure the sustainable maintenance of such technologies. As mentioned in Druk White Lotus, keeping simple operations available for student participation is a good way to keep students actively involved by having them repeat simple tasks such as opening and closing heating grates. Additionally, depending on location, it would be important to utilize resources and technologies depending on the local climate and local materials available. For instance a play like Arizona might be ideal for solar panels, while not congenial for rainwater, however, a place like upstate New York would be ideal for utilizing local river and stream water resources. ||
 * * 3. Explain how [|Annie Leonard argues that we "aren't broke,"]  (8 minutes) and should have plenty of money for public education in the United States, then list four ways you would increase funding for public education in the United States (if you were in charge of everything). || In the short webinar, //We Aren’t Broke//, Annie Leonard makes the argument that despite the common misconception that there is not enough money to invest in the education of future citizens of the United States, there is in fact a great deal of money to be utilized, it just comes down to the spending choices of the government. As highlighted in the webinar, a significant portion of the one trillion dollars of tax payer money is being doled out to the military, 726 billion dollars (2011). A second large portion of the federal budget is being expended through subsidies to companies that do not benefit United States citizens. Companies such as those that produce oil and gas make use of many of these subsidies and often the economic development of these companies comes at the expense of these citizens through environmental pollution. Additionally money is spent to handle superfund sites and contamination caused by companies instead of holding the companies who created the ecological disasters responsible. Additionally tax payer money is used to bail out and keep certain businesses afloat instead of investing in new companies. Given the opportunity, there are several ways in which tax payer money could be better spent to invest in the future of the United states, namely, education. First, the amount of money spent on the military could be drastically reduced. To spend nearly 50% of tax payer money on military research, while only 6 percent is spent on education seems like a ridiculously high ratio of money investment on an area that has the principle return of being able to kill more people efficiently. While national defense is importance, public education should not be such a low priority, and investment, as it directly affects all citizens and how the future of a nation develops. A second course of action should be to remove subsidies that are given to oil and gas companies. One of the major polluting sources to the environment are oil and gas companies, and it is deplorable that tax payer money should be going to help keep companies alive that are polluting the very environments of the people who gave them money. This money could better be spend by providing additional public education funding resources. Third, there should be a cap or a limit to the amount of campaign funds that can be given to candidates. Currently there is a type of limit, but often loopholes are exploited to get around these such as super PACs which have allowed super PACs to be formed anonymously and pose risk to severe grass root lobbying. This would prevent corporations from influencing the amount of subsidies given to companies that do not improve the quality of life for citizens. This funding could then be spend on public education. Fourth environmental pollution often costs the government billions of dollars. Superfund sites, which are sites that have been so environmentally contaminated that they can essentially be considered natural disasters, cost the governments billions of dollars in tax payer money. If these sites had to be cleaned and paid for by the companies themselves, with more extensive regulations, the government could then use the money saved to fund public education. Related to environmental contamination, is product waste and disposal. Millions of pounds of plastic end up in landfills every years, and it’s often the job of the government to see that there are enough landfills with the capacity to burn or hold the waste generated by companies. If instead it was the requirement of all companies to dispose of their products//, from cradle to grave analysis//, it would reduce the waste generated and allow the money devoted to burning through //throw away products//, to be spend on public education. ||
 * 4. Describe the approach to math education applauded in [|this article] , then explain how your own math education compare || The approach to math education examined in //The Math Revolution// puts an emphasis on teaching students to think about math conceptually and then use that conceptual knowledge as a tool to predict, explore, and explain the world around them. This deviates from many common teaching practices that rely on the memorization of formulas and speed as virtue. Instead a type of problem-solving approach is used where cognitive exercises that require investigating, conjecturing, predicting, analyzing, and finally verifying their own mathematical strategy are used to solve complex problems. The end result is not speed or accuracy, but fully thinking through the problem and creatively applying basic math tools and puzzling out possible solutions. Additionally, in this style of teaching, a large gradient of student abilities can be incorporated to learn at the same time by grouping skill levels together. It also emphasizes not necessarily accuracy, but creativity, stamina, and logic as more importance traits for solving complex problems. This type of teaching style has largely been absent from my math education before high school. RPI does incorporate some of these elements such as working in groups, most commonly in recitation settings and with some professors. In high school I was fortunate enough to have a gifted calculus teacher who incorporated these elements into her lesson plans. Conversely, in elementary and middle school, memorization and speed were often virtues that were regarded more vigorously than the tackling of complex problems. As a major in STEM fields, however, I was never a part of any math camps, however, I did have an active education in math, beyond the requirements of school at home through my parents. In addition several of my peers did attend cram schools to prepare for tests such as the SAT’s where memorization and speed are very important and valuable skills to have to do well on the math sections of the SAT. In fact, despite doing group work with my calculus teacher, who was mentioned previously, she highly encouraged memorization as a strategy for the SAT, and the memorization of geometric areas and perimeter formulas as essential to save time on the SAT. The SAT arguably reflects the No child left behind mentality of looking only at test results to quantify performance. In terms of my own preferences in teaching styles, I do contend that some elements of math are necessary to memorize, such as multiplication tables, arriving at this step should be preceded by first teaching math in an abstract manner, and exercising, as outlined above the strategies for complex problem solving. In addition, valuing the traits of stamina, logic, and creativity in problem solving, because these are often the key traits needed to solve problems in STEM fields that arise and have no answer. Also working in groups is very beneficial for providing a safe setting for peers to teach and learn from one another, and is also a regularly encountered scenario in STEM fields. In terms of future improvements, I believe conceptual approaches should be taken followed by memorization when necessary for better more holistic understanding. ||
 * 5. Describe the <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">[|2013 prize-winning TedTalk by Sugata Mitra,] <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">and the child-centered "SOLE" methods he advocates. The propose a SOLE (self-organizing learning environment) for sustainability education. || <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Self-Organizing Learning Environment or SOLE is a type of learning technique which focuses on the combination of broadband, collaboration, and encouragement. In its essence, if focuses on being able to let students look for answer themselves. One of the major take a ways from the research done in the study is that students are often capable of teaching themselves given some encouragement. Additionally our current education system is outdated, and was developed for the British Empire back in the Victorian era when data entry and data logs were required by human, and therefore there needed to be standardized and uniform attributes for workers. In the future knowledge may be obsolete, and in that case, problem solving will be important, and learning on one’s own may be a vital part for jobs that can be done anywhere from any location around the world. In the case studies done, even poor rural children were able to quickly accelerate and learn foreign and difficult subject matter on their own, even when language barriers were present. Stressed in the study was the very lassiez fair nature of the teacher. In the case studies the teacher had little to no part in enforcing learning other than encouragement of the learning. This “wow” factor and encouragement creates a learning environment where self-learning takes place. Also seen in was the quick adaptation of the material and then teaching of the material to others, such as fellow rural children. Additionally one of the fundamentally outdated characteristics of our current education system is the sense of threat, which turns off learning in the brain, when tests or exams are used to gauge performance. This methodology was useful for past attempts to collect human data, but in the future, this may very well hinder the advancement of education. For sustainability education, a similar program could be adopted which features SOLE. In the case of sustainability education, thought exercises where questions are posed, but the instructor is merely there to ask questions, or to act as encouragement could be used for environmental effects. Questions such as where does air pollution come from? Where does water pollution come from? How did it get there? What are the effects of growing up near a factory? Who has the power to change environmental policies? There are all questions that could easily be posed to students in grade school to create self-organizational learning environment. This would be essential for creating responsible and active citizens who care about the environment and are able to in the future find the information needed to complete future jobs. Additionally, SOLE could be applied by reaching out to communities across the United States to educate them about the same pollution problems to have greater affects since all that is needed in a broadband connect, collaboration, and encouragement. This type of communication could easily be accomplished over Skype™. ||