Grand School

Grand School
At Chicago's North Grand High, great design inspires great attitudes.
By T. Shawn Taylor

The environment in which education takes place, if you ask any teacher or student does have an effect on how well they learn, and how easily it is to concentrate on the education process, and for some schools that are getting a “face lift” with upgrades in facilities students are responding in many different ways.
In one inner city Chicago school this tall tale has become a reality and for a mostly Hispanic low income area, students don’t go to school in a dilapidated old building, they go to school in a state of the art, technically sound facility with brand new computer labs, science and engineering wings, and sound proofing which blocks out the screeching sounds of the L train that passes directly past the school on a regular basis during class time.
The new design also has the community satisfied in several different ways, one of which is that they are saving money, in the long run. With all of the new features such as open windows within the cafeteria, there is less demand for electrical lighting, which keeps costs lower, which keeps taxes lower, or leaves more funds for what schools are intended for, the education of students. The second aspect of the new design is the 75 video cameras set throughout the school keep the gang violence out, and when a problem does arise the security team knows exactly where to go, and who to get. This keeps those students who might have had to worry about violence instead of education at ease to concentrate.
One of the things that I really can relate to in this is the respect level that the students have for their school that is new and state of the art. One of the main disadvantages of how the education community currently modifies schools (repairing or rebuilding only small sections) is that the students either see areas they have no relation to since their courses do not partake in it, or they see the rest of the school and wonder why it is so dilapidated. This leads students to care less about the school, and keeping it clean and functioning verse allowing students to walk into a new environment and take it as their own. It is what it is, and if anything does not last, it falls on them not only the school administrators.
Another aspect that is great is that one project that we can do within the technology department in architecture, is school design. How would you as a student design a school in order to create an environment that is functional but also an atmosphere to which you can learn.

Taylor , T. Shawn, Grand School At Chicago's North Grand High, great design inspires great attitudes. , This article was retrieved on October 19, 2006 from web site: http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=art_1647&issue=oct_06

Online, on Alert

Online, on Alert
By James Daly

Students today have the world at their fingerprints, with the introduction of the internet into the educational community researching subjects became a lot easier then having to search through libraries to find out the information is miles away and will take days to get. However; with all great tools there are downsides to which may effect students work such as faulty information from a web site.
Students these days believe that anything that is on the internet is true, and these students are not using their practical thinking skills in order to realize the difference between truth, and misrepresentations of the truth and flat out lies. Students today need to be taught not only to use the internet to research information, but then how to sort through the information and find material that is of high quality and not something someone put up on the web either as a trick or to destroy the quality of what people are viewing (such as to push an agenda).
There are several steps students can take, and their teachers can help them with understanding and sorting through the information. 1. Be skeptical of the information that you are reading. 2. Show students what to do, don’t just tell them to go to the internet and find it. 3. Find out the site author, to see if they are a professional source of information. 4. Who owns the site, and do they have an agenda. 5. Who links to the site, and what information do they have. 6. Use ask.com instead of google, it has more reliable information for education.
This article I find more important then most things that we as teachers learn in college because we all do it in at some point or another by going to school and telling our students to look on the internet, assuming our students understand that the internet is filled with misinformation and they have to not only find it, but then sort through it for facts and not fiction. I also think that the idea of switching to ask.com is interesting because everyone uses google for searching, however if you use ask you will get a more “educational” search result which is what we want our students to find. I do however disagree with putting all of the responsibility on teachers in order to train students to understand what is right and wrong on the internet. Parents and communities also need to step up to the plate, and show students what they need to know, instead of passing it off to the schools will show them.

Daley , James, Online, On Alert, This article was retrieved on October 19, 2006 from web site: http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=art_1638&issue=oct_06#