September 25...For the Critical/Democratic Group

Use this space to continue to discuss your ideas about how to move forward. You can discuss possible common readings, continue to brainstorm about what sort of project you want to design and the viability of your various ideas. I (Kurt) will try to participate, too.

September 25...For the Technology Group

Use this space to continue to discuss your ideas about how to move forward. You can discuss possible common readings, continue to brainstorm about whether your group will do anything together beyond the reading group, etc. I (Kurt) will try to participate, too.

September 18...Areas of Inquiry

OK, so this week's blog prompt is designed to start a conversation about what topics/areas of inquiry might be of interest/.suitable to use as a way to tether our philosophical/theoretical work in class to real world issues/problems. Nothing is set yet, but right now I am thinking that perhaps we can settle on three or so topics and folks can work in small "inquiry-to-action" groups. From our discussion in class, it seems that you are thinking that we will mostly dwell on the "inquiry" part of the inquiry-to-action project.

The idea is that once we nail down some areas of study, then we can read/discuss work that will illuminate the theories that are at play. The hope is that doing this work in the context of real issues will serve as examples of how we can use theory to do educational work that can lead to social change.  So, for this post, let's start by sharing the kinds of areas of study/issues/problems etc. that might be of interest. One of our goals in class next week will be to use the blogs as a starting point in an effort to coalesce around a set of issues that will provide a group of interest for everyone. 

September 11...The Course of this Course?

Last week we had a great discussion about whether we ought to spend our time on theories relevant to education and social change or if we should be putting our theories into action as part of this class. Pleas provide some discussion about what you thought of the discussion and whether you would prefer to focus on learning theory in a more nearly traditional manner or, conversely, if you want to work on some sort of action project.

Note: there is no reason why the two are entirely mutually exclusive, it could simply be more about where we put our emphasis...