Interdisciplinary unit with SMART boards

With easy access to a multitude of sources and the ability to save and share files the SMART board could be an accessible way to have an interdisciplinary unit between classes. I can see a couple week unit between a history and an English course. The classes could instant message or use a discussion forum. One class could research, the other could write creatively based on the research. This could all happen instantly, allowing two classes to individually focus on different aspects of one issue. It seems that the separation of classes has been predominant; this would be an easy to fuse them back together.

Facebook Debate Results

Last week I blogged about my students choosing to debate about how much regulation to put on social networking. The two different camps were the “we need more regulation in social networking” and the “we need more responsibility and less regulations” side. Each side was comprised of six students, with a three person jury and a non voting moderator. The debate took two days to complete, after a few days of group research and preparation. Each team member had a subtopic speech, an opposition speech, and an impromptu response to opposition speech. The first day was somewhat rough as they got used to the format of a formalized debate. By the second day they got a good flow going. Both sides were well-researched and came up with valid points. On a two to one decision the jury ruled that students should have more personal responsibility about what they post on the internet and that regulation was not the way to go. They even suggested that a teacher in the high school teaches a unit specifically on being smart with social networking.