Exam+1+noah

In his TedTalk Sugata Mitra lectures us on a new education method he refers to as SOLE (self-organizing learning environment). SOLE is a very far out learning technique that gives new meaning to the nouns teacher and student. In this new education method Sugata says the major needed components are broadband cooperation and encouragement. What is visualized in this system is the teacher will ask the students a broad intriguing question such as, “Why do humans have five fingers and toes instead of four”. The students will then work together researching the answer and will find many different arguments that are logically explained using different field topics. In this particular example the students may end up studying genetics, geometry, anthropology and many other different fields until they finally reach the answer. Sugata refers to this type of learning as sexy and I tend to agree with him, it doesn’t focus on one subject for too long and bore the students to death instead the students are interested in what they are learning because they want to know the answer to the question. The teacher’s also have a very hands off role, Sugata refers to the style as being the “granny”. All he thinks the teachers have to do is give the kids an interesting question and watch them work together to find the answer. If there are fights or disagreements that break out the teacher is there to settle it down but the amount of actual “teaching” this type of teacher does is minimal. I like to compare the teacher to a scientist, the scientist sets up a controlled experiment and then watches the reaction happen without interfering with it, whereas the these teachers are setting up a controlled learning environment and watching the kids learn without interfering with them.

A good SOLE question for Sustainability Education would be “How many trees do we need to intake all the CO2 made by humans?” Given this question the students would face many challenges such as finding the population of humans, figuring out how much CO2 human’s outtake per intake of O2. This would challenge them from a biology, chemistry, math and many other standpoints. The students would also have to figure out other ways humans produce CO2 for example car emissions or making of cement, then they would have to come up with an estimate for how much CO2 is produced from that which is a challenging statistical project. The more in depth the students want to get the more they start learning more and more about other fields and if the question is interest enough to them they will take the answer seriously.

The article “The Math Revolution” spoke of a very interesting approach to teaching math. The theory in the article was stop focusing on memorizing time tables and other arithmetic/ algebra math rules and instead focus student’s attention on logic and problem solving skills. According the article this helps students get a better grasp of what they are learning about and being able to apply concepts to more complex scenarios. The article argues many math curriculums now are focused solely on doing what a calculator or computer can do for us, and it is very important that we continue to understand how these problems are being done but there is no need to drill so much “mental math” into the head of a young learner during the most important years of learning of their lives. It wants us to reach out and focus on teaching kids how to logically deduct things given a scenario, for example instead of just learning the order of operations and being told to solve the equation 49+ (18-3), the article vouches for a different approach, “After a brief break, Rober asked each child to come up with a narrative that explained what the expression 49+ (18–3) means. The children invented stories involving fruit, the shedding and growing of teeth, and, to the amusement of all, toilet monsters”. I think this is a much better approach to learning, the equation 49+ (18-3) is a particularly good example why. Many student given this problem may not understand the order of operations at all and solve the equation like 49+ 18= 67 -3= 64 and get the right answer. However in these private math institutions for young learners the article speaks about “When one young boy, Shawn, got tangled up in his reasoning, Rober was quick to point to the exact spot where his thinking went awry (in the enthusiastic telling of a tale about farmers, bountiful harvests, and apple-eating varmints, Shawn began by talking about what happened to the 49 apples, when the order of operations demanded that he first describe a reduction in the 18 apples). Rober gently set him straight. Later, the children told stories about 49–(18+3) and 49–(18-3) too”.

This is an amazing example of learning to understand math. Not only does Shawn understand the order of operations he understands where it can be applied and why it may be important. When he sees this equation he is not just seeing numbers but he is thinking much more logistically. My math education was not quite the same as the one the article describes. I went to a blue ribbon school, which is a pretty prestigious award for public schools, and many of my math teachers when I was younger were very good at applying the math to scenarios where the students would have to logically think about the problem. However as I got older and the math got more advance the teachers lost part of their grasp on understanding exactly where the math might be useful and at that point my math education became much more based on memorizing rules. While I was still pretty good at math at that point I did lose a lot of interest in math in high school partially due to be unable to relate to it, however when I went to RPI and I was able to see how the math maybe helpful and the teaching methods were much more like how the article insists they should be my interest in math was peaked again.

David Sobel argues that placed based education is different from environmental education because in David’s eyes environmental education is learning about large rainforests and mountains thousands of miles away in other parts of the world or it was just a little add on where a guest lecture would give a 50 minute lecture and there would be nothing else. On the other hand place based education is about continuously being productive in the local community and learning about all the different subject areas through that. For example 6th grade students learned their whole math curriculum by marketing for plants they grew in their local garden. The biggest difference between traditional learning and placed based education seems to be replacing textbooks with real life experiences for the main resource of learning. This helps realize John Dewey’s goal of what he thinks education should accomplish of making kids active citizens and treating schools “laboratories for democracy”, as it gives kids experience in deal with civil action, environmental protection, gardening and those kind of things.

One key point made in the video was that placed base education teaches students things that are relevant to them and their surroundings and therefore are naturally more interesting to the students. This can help install a sense of identity in students at an early age and will help them become more aware of the resources around them and maybe more importantly the resources not that the student can work towards making a reality. For example a school in a small mining town was able to make a nature trail with a bunch of bird houses on it for people to enjoy the birds. The students even did a bio diversity test on all the different types of species they found.

Another really cool key point made on the video was how placed base education changes the problem the kids are dealing with to make it something more exciting to them. For example instead of learning about the Mayflower from a textbook students would put on a play about the pilgrims. This is such a cool idea because this way the students that like acting in the class are going to learn about the pilgrims from memorizing all the lines in the play, while the kids who like wood working or painting will learn about the pilgrims by doing research on what their background of the play should look like.

A third key point about placed based education is that it makes students more comfortable in nature and their local surroundings at an early age and progressively challenges them more and more until they are basically experts on their local environment.

The purpose behind the design of the Druk White Lotus School is to make a structure that will be long lasting and environmentally friendly. To make this goal even harder the building can only be made using locally found materials to enhance the connections local have with the building and to minimize the environmental impact that would occur from transporting foreign materials. Another challenge the designers had to face was the lack of water available to the school. To make up for this the bathrooms are designed not to use any water other than for washing hands. In the bathrooms the airways are built in such a way that new air is always flowing through the building when the sun is out so the building doesn’t get too stinky. Such a complex building requires a lot of care from the inhabitants of the building which forces the students to have a very good understanding of how the school works. The school also has a very complex educational mission. The school aims to keep the local culture and values very much alive and prevalent but it also aims to teach more westernized skills such as mathematics and computers.

A school like the Druk White Lotus School in the United States would be a very interesting concept. With the amount of environmental diversity it would look a lot different depending on where in the United States it was built but for similarity purposes I am going to say it’s being built in the Rocky Mountains. The “High in the Sky” school of the Rocky Mountains would have a lot of similar troubles as the Druk White Lotus School, it could only be used so much during the year since there are brutally cold winters and if we are only using locally found materials that can’t be brought in on a truck a lot of granite or other hard rock with mud cement would be used to make the structure. One big advantage the “High in the Sky” school would have it much greater access to running water, this way the tenants of the building wouldn’t have to be a stingy with their water usage.

Annie’s argument in the movie is that there is declining amounts of funding going towards education, environmental protection and health care where there should be plenty of money to spend on them. She proposes that most of the money our country is collecting from taxes is going towards subsidies of large companies, which in an ideal world is fine because the large companies are investing this money smartly in companies that will help the world grow from a sustainability point of view and an equality point of view. However, most of the times these companies invest in what Annie calls the “dinosaur economy”, which is mostly ways to continue to make lots of money by fracking oil. These companies are able to get the continued support of politicians because they have so much money and are able to pay off politicians and threaten to take away their funding if their agenda is not met. Many people may see this as corruption but it puts many politicians in a hard place because they know if they don’t take the bribe the next person will.

If I had total control the first way I would raise public education funding is I would take tax breaks away from big companies. By taking the tax breaks away I may be taking away from the investments the company makes but that’s ok because I will invest a lot of the money and I will be able to choose what the best companies to be invested in. This way we will have more money in the future to be able to spend on education.

The next thing I would do is make video games illegal. So much time of energy of our smartest people are put into making video games and they I have yet to see a positive side effect of playing video games all the time other than a first grader becoming super popular to fifth graders because he plays GTA. Video games can be very stress relieving but so can playing an instrument or getting some exercise or cooking or sewing or whatever you are into. I realize this doesn’t save money from a first had perspective but it will improve the intelligence of our society and make the current funding we have more useful.

Thirdly, I would make kids more responsible for saving and/or collecting funds for their school. For example every kid would be responsible for cleaning up after themselves and the classroom. Kids could be responsible for having bake sales or selling tee-shirts or whatever the kids like to do. This will help kids work together and figure out what their strengths are, maybe a kid is trying to help with the bake sale and realizes he’s a terrible baker but is really good a marketing, all the sudden he realizes he wants to be a business/ communications major when he grows up, goes to RPI, meets Professor Fortun, becomes her favorite student and takes over TAing from Alli Morgan who is now a professor at USC. The main idea behind this is it will help the students grow more as people with the existing funds available to them and may also raise a little money.

My final grand idea for raising money for public schools is having the state donate solar panels to school to save on power bills. This will mostly likely give the school more than enough energy and will allow it to sell extra energy back to its local power company.