Richard's Not Really a Blog Teacher Blog

  When I was an undergraduate back in the late 1990's, one of my degrees was in Communications. Now back in this day, the term "communications" had a more limited scope than it does today. This was a time before social media...before Twitter, before Tik Tok, and yes...even before Facebook. The communication we were taught during my course of study focused primarily on face-to-face interpersonal communication. Professors taught us about proper use of rhetoric, the importance of nonverbal communication, and how to effectively and efficiently transmit verbal information. Despite all the hours of classes, stacks of written papers, and time dedicated to reading and studying the craft of communication, decades later I can really recall only one primary lesson..."The message you intend to say is not necessarily the message others hear." As obvious as that sounds, I have found that many people forget this simple fact. All people are products of their environment and exp...

       When I was a high school student in the early to mid-1990's, I can remember those rare moments when it was time to watch a video in class. It was like Halley's Comet - all of us students knew this day would one day happen, and now that it has arrived, it's time to celebrate and alert all of our friends to the big news. While this may be a bit of a hyperbole, it is not too far from the truth. A teacher showing a video in class required a great deal of effort - borrowing the TV/VCR cart from the library, wheeling that rickety cart to the classroom, and then overcoming the technological deficiencies of the VHS cassette. These obstacles usually meant that teachers would show an entire two-hour video when only ten minutes were really needed to supplement the lesson.     In the modern classroom, technological access has improved to such a degree that teachers are able to effortlessly present short-form digital videos with the click...

     As a Social Studies teacher with a particular fondness for United States Presidential history, I find great interest in the Presidential campaign season. I truly enjoy studying all the candidates, even the ones widely considered long-shots, and their strategies to reach the White House. The 2016 Presidential election will long be remembered by many as unconventional and even chaotic. With Barrack Obama exiting the White House, the situation was prime for a dark horse candidate to emerge as a Presidential frontrunner. I remember this day well. It was late in the year 2015, when there were still over fifteen candidates vying to be the Republican representative. The field included many career politicians with established reputations as elected leaders, but on this night, I watched the news as the anchors declared a surprising candidate as the leader in the polls – former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore. I vaguely knew this man in name only. I had no knowledge of his polit...

     Every day, students are inundated with information. It seems that anyone with a laptop and a decent Wi-Fi connection can pontificate a point and present it as fact. These 'armchair experts" have the luxury of presenting information uninterrupted and propagate their points without the types of conversational feedback that is typically present in most interpersonal exchanges. When engaging in an argument with someone face-to-face, points are seldom left unchallenged and followed with a simple question such as "So what?" or "how do you know that?" (Toulmin, p. 98) However, in many modern digital platforms, commentators are allowed to spew misinformation without being challenged to their credentials or the sources of their information, thus giving credence and credibility to many who do not deserve it.        In The Uses of Argument (1958/2003) Stephen Toulmin argues that students need to be taught not to take in an argument on a macro level, but...