Monday, July 12, 2010

What I'm reading right now


I am reading several books on Cold War society. I saw this political cartoon and I felt like it really encompassed a lot of the political tension

I found this cartoon dealing with speed reading. . . if only it were this easy

Useful links for this class

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/ - this web site has a wonderful general overview of U.S. History

http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/ - we will be analyzing a lot of political cartoons in this class and Dr. Seuss is one of my favorite political cartoonist

http://www.ushistory.org/ - this site is useful because of the sources it provides rights on the homepage

Speed Reading for my class

students need to understand the skill of speed reading, especially in history. An easy way to learn this skill is to do the reading for each class lecture. Open your book to the section, then read the intro paragraph for each section (everytime the font changes in the book). After you read the intro paragraph, you should have a general idea of what the section is going to be about. For all the other paragraphs, at the least, you should read to topic and conclusion sentences. Aslo if there is a word in bold, you should read the info around that word. This is a simple way to get through the reading. You should always take notes along with your reading or put sticky notes in your text book and take notes that way. At least twice a unit I will give quizes based off of speed reading the required reading myself.

Technology in the classroom

With the generation of students now entering the classroom, it is extremely important to use technology in during the learning process. As a teacher, it is important to learn to balance the diversity in instruction. For example, students should have a wide amount of tools in order to learn. Just because students are more exposed to the digital world, they need to know how to use an actual encylopedia or even the index of a text book. Most students can google a term and finish their homework, but I hope to teach them when it is important to use the various tools out there."

student brings typewriter to class (CS 1301 @ GT)

This is a good example of why we have begun to intergrate technology in the classroom