HW 41 - Initial Internet Research on Schooling

Maybe you've locked in on one very specific topic or angle during your interviews or maybe you're still exploring among several general perspectives. This assignment is intended to cause you to enhance your understanding of one or more aspects of school that you find particularly bizarre, wonderful, awful, +/or crucial.

Identify five or more internet sites related to your topic(s). Please make an annotated bibliography of 3 or more sources - each should include correct MLA citation, a very brief summary of most important points (2-4 sentences) and a very brief analysis of the utility of the source for particular topics or arguments (3-5 sentences).

Any sites you identified that you don't write up as annotated bibliography entries can be tabulated in an "Additional Works Consulted" list.

For those of you interested in education as tool of oppression/empowerment - here's the entry I started on Wikipedia.

Use the following as a model for each of the 3 or more entries in your annotated bibliography -

Andy's Model:
Viren, Tom et al. "How To Be Cool." http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Cool. WikiHow, n.d. Web. 2 December 2009.
This article, compiled and edited by many authors, attempts to provide advice of how to become cool. It contains a list of suggestions, additional tips, and warnings. Many of these tips will be familiar - "Be yourself" and "Be confident" - and others less so "Find a way to love learning."

This short guide deserves reading for its helpful simplification - in the introduction it reduces coolness to being confident, unique, and on friendly terms with everyone. The copious suggestions, tips, and warnings also reflect a variety of the dominant perspectives about coolness - which seems to primarily be understood as being admired and liked by the masses as an authentic and friendly and socially-adept human being.

Your goals with this annotated bibliography include tightening your focus on an aspect of school, understanding that aspect, and identifying resources worth coming back to (or not worth coming back to) for yourself and your triangle partners when presenting your research synopsis and writing your end of the unit papers.

Due Wednesday, February 24 at 9pm.

HW 40 - School Interviews x 5 & Synthesis

Part A - Please interview five diverse people (self, family, friends, acquaintances, etc) about a particular aspect of school.

Some aspects that we came up with in various sections include:

• Making school better
• The experience of being a student
• School as a sorting machine
• School as machine for conquering and puppeteering a population
• Pedagogic techniques - grading, testing, etc.
• The motivations of school - for the student, parent, teacher, system
• The functions of school - both actual and claimed/rhetorical
• The historical development and transformations of US schools

Please make your interview questions high quality - they should evoke real thinking, non-predictable responses, and insight.

After transcribing notes from each of the interviews, please turn to Part B.

Part B:

Please synthesize insights from your interviews (that you figured out or that someone said) to write a paragraph or two about a particular aspect of school that you find important and interesting.

Parts A & B should be posted on your blog Sunday the 21st of February by 9pm.

HW 39 - First School Assignment

Please complete parts A & B by Tuesday, February 9, 9pm.

Part A:

Please write 3 each of the most interesting, fascinating, powerful questions, ideas, and experiences you've encountered about school. So please make three lists of three items each.

Part B:

Please explore one aspect or moment of school in a 2-4 paragraphs. Show us what's strange or great or awful about it. Talk about how you feel about it - how do you think it came to be - what consequences it produces.