Teaching comparative in the news
Marc Mayfield's efforts to get his students at LaGrange High School (GA) involved in blogging about the topics in their comparative government and politics classes made news. (The article even mentions this blog.)Congratulations, Marc, to you and your students.
If you didn't check out the great description and grading rubric before, now's the time to take a look. This is a great teaching idea.
See the publicity: ‘Internet is virtually limitless as teaching tool’
"LaGrange High government teacher Marc Mayfield knows his students spend a lot of their free time online. Web sites like MySpace and YouTube are part of the youth culture."But Mayfield sees the Internet as more than a vehicle for social interaction.
"'The potential of the Internet as a teaching and learning tool is virtually limitless,' Mayfield said. 'It can make learning fun and interesting.'
"The fifth-year LaGrange High teacher with 19 years of teaching experience is putting his conviction into practice this semester, having advanced placement students create their own web logs - better known as blogs - for a comparative government class focusing on China, Russia, Nigeria, Iran, Great Britain and Mexico.
"Instead of a traditional notebook crammed with clippings and photos, students are finding and posting their material online...
"Mayfield believes the online experiment has been successful so far and plans to continue it. One plus has been the friendly competition among blogging groups.
"The groups vie to create the best blogs in the class. The fifth-period Russian blog is the current favorite. Among its features: an updated “Putin’s Picture of the Week,” a streaming version of the Russian national anthem and a load of current news and events. Other groups post polls and trivia questions to jazz up their blogs and get the class interested and involved..."
See also:
- Blogging for class
- Mayfield's class blogs
- Marc Mayfield's offer of information to other teachers
- Marc's description of the blogging assignment
- Marc's rubric for grading blogs
Labels: pedagogy
posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:23 AM
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