Working in the course Blog Place, produce a weblog (on-line journal) to demonstrate your preparation for class and your engagement with assigned readings and class experiences. Writing in your weblog is a significant means for preparing for class and synthesizing the ideas that feature prominently in ED253. Throughout the course, I invite you to revisit your weblog, to reflect on your blog posts, on what you’ve read, discussed and observed about yourself and the field of education. By constructing a weblog, you will be furthering your reflective and analytical abilities in the context of the field of education.
Prompts for your blogposts will be developed by your class peers. To find your prompt, from the Assignments tab on the main menu, select the post prompt tab corresponding with your ED253 section.
Posts to your weblog should strive to integrate your reflections on course readings, previous posts, and experiences in class. Critical discussions and analyses of readings are expected. Please review the Weblog Assessment Rubric.
(Posts are due at the beginning of ten (10) class meetings depending on the schedule for group learning experiences, not to exceed 500 words for each post. This assignment will be assessed using the weblog assessment rubric).
Distinguish each post to your WebLog with a fitting title that also includes: BlogPost1, BP2, etc.
Rationale
Reflection is an attribute of professional practice. Indeed, we do not learn and develop from experience as much as we learn from reflecting on that experience. In this context, reflection is the process of constructing meaning by thinking about and interpreting the significance of lived experience.
Journal writing or maintaining an online weblog (Blog) is critical to the development of reflective practice. It is a tool for documenting experience and for transforming ideas and assumptions about teaching, learning and education into personal understanding and professional knowledge. It is digital space for writing and illustrating (through sound, still and moving images) your ideas, feelings, questions, and reactions to readings, classroom discussions and other activities. It affords you an opportunity and a means to express, describe, analyze and question your experiences, beliefs, and ideas both as a student growing up and now as a preservice teacher.
What do you believe? What matters to you? What influences who you are? As a human subject, an agent of education, you have a unique identity informed by matters of race, class, gender, ability, religion, ideological beliefs, family and more. How do these aspects of your identity relate to the foundational issues in the field of education? To this end, I invite you to identify issues, events and ideas in the history, political economy and sociology of education that relate to your lived experiences and understandings of schooling.
Welcome to ED253 School & Society -- Dr. David Shutkin 