During the train ride, Michael and his friends usually notice that many of the city streets are choked with the early morning rush hour traffic. Most times, the vehicles move quite slowly and sometimes they are at a complete standstill. The train ride to the station that is close to their school takes about 15 minutes.
Let’s begin with a story. One day, Mark decided to leave his car at home and use the bus to get to work and to take his daughter to school. Sara was very excited because she hardly ever rode in a bus as her father would take her everywhere in his car. Sara’s mom woke her up and they had to leave earlier since the bus would take longer than using dad’s car.
In the City of Atlanta in Georgia, a huge world class sporting event was held in the summer of 1996. It was the Modern Olympics. It was a great time for the city as it hosted countless visitors and athletes from all over the world. The city officials realized that the city would be ‘choked’ and grind to a halt.
Mr. Yearwood loves teaching and has a passion for it primarily because he enjoys interacting with people. He is excited about Geography and loves sharing ideas and concepts about this subject. Consequently, he employs a variety of methods and techniques that make Geography exciting and interesting.
Dr. Keith Explores is a new blog series written by Dr. Keith Yearwood, a geoscientist at the University of Maryland. Dr. Keith takes pieces of our natural world and explains them one at a time, encouraging and helping all of us to be more attentive to our surroundings. At the end of each post is a piece of technology, project, method or organization to help you.
Today’s talk begins with a small activity. Take a clean, clear glass and put some tap water into it. Set it down and examine it carefully. Most likely you will see nothing in the water. It looks clean and pure and it probably is safe to drink. Take another clean glass and do the same thing, but this time, place a teaspoon of salt in this glass of water.
Imagine yourself to be a bit of chemical substance that if someone swallows you, they can get very ill. You are flushed down the kitchen sink and you find yourself surrounded by the water that helped to flush you down the sink. You travel through many pipes and end up in a larger pipe and join many other chemical friends.
The most basic levels is the S (Substitition)- using technology as a simple substitution for more traditional models with no change. A (augmentation) is the second level where technology is used as a substitute with some minor improvement. These two levels are considered “below the line” meaning that they don’t really use technology in the most effective way.
As schools begin to integrate technology into all areas of academics I’m nervous about the extent to which we make this integration meaningful especially in terms of assessments. Inside are three of my own questions and my answers to them. Hopefully, the US education system can begin to move in the right direction.
Internet access. In the US, I’m not sure if it’s a luxury or a necessity. However, I am sure that children today benefit from using the Internet to supplement their traditional school education. We know that there are books, videos, games, and countless other online resources to help children learn.
