Connection to History, Part III

Reference Point:
Toppo, Greg. "10 years later, the real story behind Columbine". USA Today magazine
Find it, read it, and judge for yourself, all here.

This is one of the things I dislike most. Historical events and personas are so often maligned because, sadly, someone started a rumor or just passed one on and on and down through time and memory.


For instance, the much-played up "first Thanksgiving of America" never actually happened. The governor of the colony, William Bradford, wrote Of Plymouth Colony (a portion of which can be found here, although unfortunately not the portion with which we are concerned) and nowhere in the first year or so does he make mention of a great gathering to give thanks- let alone one in peace between the Native Americans and colonists, who coexisted in an uneasy truce.

In the same vein, I have to wonder if Henry Wadsworth Longfellow intended to perpetuate such a falsity or simply attract attention to an overlooked event he believed pertinent to America's people and its history. Paul Revere's Ride (a massively inaccurate, and yet hugely popular, poem from the 1800s, a copy of which can be found here, although if "...on the eighteenth of April in '75..." sounds familiar, you've probably already read it) is so far off-track it isn't even funny. First of all, two other riders rode that night. Second of all, Revere was caught by the British and sent home in disgrace less than halfway through the ride.

To use an example that is unfortunately much closer to our time and more familiar to us, one word: Columbine. Columbine High School and the Columbine shootings have become embedded in the national consciousness, a reminder of what could happen and a symbol of something that had become all-too-common in our society.
Sadly, most of the "facts" we have come to know about the events at Columbine, in the past years are wrong, according to Mr. Toppo. A re-revealing of evidence and more objective studying of the facts, such as the shooters' journals and other forensically conclusive evidence, reveals facts contrary to popular "knowledge", such as:

1. The shooters were actually bullies; not so much the bullied ones.
2. The plan was not to kill specific people using guns; it was a plan to kill as many as possible, possibly over a thousand people, using guns and bombs.
3. The shooters were not righteous victims of a school and parental system gone wrong; one was actually an intelligent, "psychopathic" predator with a megalomaniacal view of the world (Eric Harris, who conceived the plan) and the other was a "suicidal,... lovelorn" individual with a incredible paranoia (Dylan Kleblod).

While the last is surely one of the most horrible tragedies, it truly irritates me that what we as a society accept as "fact" can, in fact, turn out to be so far from the truth it's not even funny any more.

L.P.

Connection to History, Part II

Please note before reading:
REFERENCE MATERIAL USED: Curtis, Diane. "Building Online Learning Communities: A worldwide audience may be the motivation students need to succeed." I.E.: Interactive Educator magazine. SMART Technologies. Vol. 2, No. 2, Autumn 2006. Hardcopy, page23.
Find it online to read and judge for yourself here, in PDF format.
Enter page number 23 at the top, search the PDF, or scroll down until you find it. (You will need a PDF reader, such as the one provided to the public by Adobe Acrobat. If you do not already have a PDF reader installed on your computer, the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader, version 9.1, can be downloaded for free here.)

History, like most relevant disciplines, has many practical applications in other disciplines. History is particularly relevant in integrated technology, and I'm not talking about simply studying the days when computers filled rooms and spilled out into hallways, today's eighth-grade maths was the greatest usage for them, and "debugging" a computer meant getting out a flyswatter and killing some giant moths in-between the foot-across wires. Instead, I find it interesting how far we've come- exactly how "integrated" today's modern world is, especially in the modernist classroom.

Diane Curtis's article in I.E. magazine for Autumn 2006 (see above for full reference information) highlights the use of current- if not cutting-edge- technology in the American classroom, to study everything from English to the maths, from history itself to the modern-day sciences. Curtis also examines the positives and negatives of said use.

There are many positives, she contends. With the rising job turnover, today's students will likely hold "ten or more jobs" in tomorrow's workforce. Being able to interact with technology and teach themselves new concepts easily will be a plus. "Self-directed learning", a education experience wherein students as individuals and classrooms as wholes develop a basic curricula, with minimal input from teachers other than the essential directive, guides this process of self-taught instruction, while keeping students on-track to success.
International exposure, exposing students to the wider audiences of that technology makes available, encourages them to do better work in the first place and think more about what they are doing. Students, Curtis and other involved educators say, tend to think more about what they are writing when it's for more than just their teachers' eyes.
Teachers have begun to use such diverse technological tools as blogs, e-mail, MeneMAC (a program that creates a integrated "school-within-a-school"), chat rooms, podcasts, websites, videoconferencing and Blackboard (an online discussion forum).

However, the educators involved in such programs are also aware of their drawbacks, contends Curtis. Educators must be aware of the content of these programs before committing to them. The content must add to the direction of the class, not detract from it.
Also, a major concern is, as always, security. A program used in such a way must- with great certainty on all parts- be secure, not only for the students. It must be safe enough for teachers, other students, the school and the parents to trust in it.
A third concern for many teachers is the cohesion or lack thereof of the student body, and therefore the classroom in question. Students, they claim, must be a cohesive and coherent whole in the real world before venturing into the virtual one, or the communication of the program among the online community may be lost, as well.

However, says Curtis, the positives of the situation of integrated technology in the modern classrooms of America certainly outweigh the negatives of the situation, if and when said technology in question is used properly.

What is your opinion on integrated technology in the modern, American classroom? Do you agree with Curtis, or disagree? Why do you believe that?

L.P.