A website that I have found very helpful during the past semester, especially during the past week when developing my rationale statement, was http://www.searcheric.org/. This website is a public search engine that is a portal to the vast body of educational research available on the internet from the U.S. Department of Educaiton. The Preus Library website also has a search engine that provides access to the body of research. The link to that search engine is located at http://library.luther.edu/pages/azlist.htm#efg

This week I found a wonderful site that has a collection of quality websites linked to it. It is called Best of History Websites and is located at http://www.besthistorysites.net

This website has many ranked, high-quality sites that relate to many history subject areas. These sites are current, relevant, interesting, and informational. It was dangerous looking at the website because there are so many good sites that link to it. I need to make sure that I bookmark this page as a future history teacher.

This morning I had the opportunity to chat with a couple friends about some of their experiences in school related to diversity. They mentioned that teachers did best best by modeling. If teachers modeled a positive attitude toward diversity, used diverse teaching methods, and had an open mind in the classroom they had the best chance of having a caring, respected, and, (most important to them) challenging classroom. These ideas and attitudes cannot merely be implemented at the snap of a finger, they take intentional effort on the part of the teacher.

It is Blog time once again. This week's installment includes the website http://www.educationindex.com. This website is full of links to other quality websites. A person can browse by both subject area and student lifestage. Sample links for history include an online exhibit of the Library of Congress on the year 1492, a site on the American West, and the Civil War home page. There are links for many other subject areas. This is definitely a site to remember for future reference.

After reflecting on the readings, our class time, and a discussion today in Reading in the Content Area, I have come to the conclusion that it is important that we get to know our students individually. While the Woolfolk text talks about learning differences and social class differences on the basis of groups, it is still very important that we learn enough about each student to recognize each individual's gifts and challenges. For example, SES often can be a determining factor in a student's success in school. However, students, even from the beginning will sometimes succeed beyond what research says they should, based on SES. While people often have idealistic notions about raising the achievement for lower-performing groups (i.e. African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans), group improvement will not happen without individual improvement first. It is the individual that is the most important unit in the teaching profession. Mary Jorgensen has a motto that reflects her aspirations and goals as a teacher, "Changing the world, one classroom at a time." However, this motto forgets the fact that we are teaching students, the classroom is merely the context. While the task of teaching students with unique personalities and characters and different challenges and opportunities may appear daunting, a more appropriate motto relieves the stress of this daunting task, "Changing the world, one student at a time."

This morning as I was looking on the Internet I found a wonderful website filled with resources for a Social Studies teacher. The site is http://awesomelibrary.org/teacher. This site contains links to many different issues and subject areas within the social studies. These subject areas include such categories as history of the West, the Civil War, Current Events, and Religions. In each category is a list of and links to Internet resources for use by students searching the Internet or teachers looking for more information and classroom materials. There are links to lesson plans, information websites, current web articles/editorials, and news stories that relate to the subject. The best part is the links are for the most part functional and link to quality websites.

One thing that I have been thinking about this week is the way that the different developmental theorists are neither completely correct or completely wrong. There are varied circumstances that require different theories for explaining the learning and development. In the past, I have sometimes focused and leaned more toward one particular theory (usually Vygotsky) at the expense of situtations that required a more Piagetian outlook. The article that I read for Wednesday, "History, Narrative, and Human Temporal Perspective: In Search of a Developmental Paradigm," helped me to see that for some situations Piaget's theory fits better, while at other times Vygotsky's theory better reflects the learning situation.

Yesterday, I spent some time visiting with Professor Jorgensen. I am currently enrolled in her section of the Paideia Capstone class, Making Decisions in U.S. Schools. At this point in the class we are focusing on philosophy and especially philosophies of education. Our discussion centered around this topic. As I start looking down the road to a classroom that I might teach in the future, the decisions that I make will be expressions of a philosophy whether or not I am consciously aware of that philosophy. However, as Professor Jorgensen helped guide me to think that a philosophy does not exist on its own, but is situated instead as a guide. From the position of philosophy a teacher (administrator, policy maker, or citizen) then accesses different empirical or scientific knowledge that can help produce the goals that the philosophy of education deems worthy of attaining. It is in this acessing of empirical or scientific knowledge that Ed Psych, and the developmental theories of Piaget and Vygotsky come into play. While there is a distinct philosophy behind each of these theories, they have the ability to be separated from that context and used to achieve the educational goals of individuals, communities, and our nation at large.

Well this is my first attempt to see if the blog works and is functional. There will be more to come. Make sure you check back another time.