Response to "Engage or Enrage Me"

To begin, this article did not go in the direction that I had expected: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m1EFMoRFvY

I certainly find the main argument of this article to be a valid and important one.  Students have always been changing, and it has always been the responsibility of schools to try to keep up, if not get ahead.  However, it now seems evident that schools have fallen ages behind the very students they are meant to educate.

This issue is one that I find particularly startling, as it seems to necessitate curriculum and technology that may have very well not been invented or conceived yet.  Curriculum that accurately and effectively engages students in their current mode or learning seems to be largely unknown.  Be this as it may, it is now every teacher's job to do everything in their power to make their material engaging and interesting on the students' terms - not curriculum and practice of days past.

"Breaking Down Hate Speech"

I selected this lesson, as I feel it is something that is often considered taboo, and goes left alone.  Ideally this issue would be covered throughout a student's life, but sadly, I doubt that this is the case.  Fortunately, this lesson is prepared for high school students, so their critical thinking and analysis skills are fairly developed, and they can really digest this information and understand the psychological consequences of hate speech, and learn that hate speech is unacceptable in online and real life scenarios.

The lesson plan itself is fairly solid.  It advocates for presenting a variety of materials to students to analyze and identify hate speech as it occurs in the source.  Key terms such as prejudice, stereotype, and derogatory are all to be defined by students, which is certainly helpful in students describing the types of hate speech they see.  The only part of the lesson plan that I would omit would be the part that tells students to role-play scenarios with hate speech.  I think a much more effective alternative would be to watch video clips of hate speech, and ask for students' reactions.

"Understanding the Digital Learner" Response

To begin, I really appreciate the overlying message of this article, and its rebellion against the 'TTWWADI' mindset.  I think it is crucial in all aspects in life to maintain a healthy skepticism and sense of curiosity, particularly when it comes to the infrastructure and framework of a system, such as education.  Failure to do this, analyzing a system, identifying problems, and modifying the system to fix said problems, leads to the failure of the system.

While I believe the article is absolutely correct in advocating teachers to adapt to their student's learning style, I also view this article as overstating the differences between teachers and their students.  The article assumes that all students, everywhere, have had the exposure to, and have thus been influenced by, technology in ways that older generations could not possibly understand.  I find this generalization to be erroneous, as there are certainly students who have grown up with very little exposure to technology, and there are also teachers who follow the cutting edge of technology, and may even hover above the curve.   The article also cites the statistics of 50% of the United States' ninth-graders in its 35 largest cities will fail to graduate.  While I would buy this statistic, and agree that it is shameful, I cannot believe what the article infers the cause to be - that a discrepancy in technological know-how between teachers and students is the main offender.  Every school has a variety of reasons for its success and failure in graduation rate, and I simply don't feel comfortable in accepting this one-size-fits-all approach.

Overall, I found this to be a thought-provoking, and informative read, but I believe it to be overambitious in its goals.