Work & Academics

Foundations of Curriculum and Instruction

I tired to make it nice and colorful to appeal to a 3rd- to 6th-grade age group and included lots more “motion” than I usually include in my web-designs.

This was one of the more interesting activities I’ve done so far in my online classes. Essentially, what we were supposed to do was create a “self-directed” online learning experience and present it in the format commonly known as a “WebQuest.” Overall, a lot more enjoyable than creating a PowerPoint presentation—which we usually have to do to accompany our papers….

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Foundations of Curriculum and Instruction

Knowledge advances each day. With the passing of time, among the many changes we can observe are new scientific discoveries, people migrating to different parts of the world, and information being easily disseminated using technology. Indeed, the world today would probably seem very surreal or fictional to people living generations ago. For starters, the cliché that the world has shrunk definitely has a lot of truth today. During one of my previous classes, I traversed the Pacific Ocean twice within four weeks and was still able to complete my assignments by making posts from internet “hot-spots” in Thailand and Singapore on my layovers between my flights and by writing papers on my laptop while flying. Just as I write this paragraph, I am sitting at a coffee shop in south India and I have just gotten off a voice over internet phone call to my mother in California which has cost me absolutely nothing. I am composing responses to my classmates who are scattered globally in locations such as the United States, Germany, and Japan as if we were just sitting in a classroom together.

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Foundations of Curriculum and Instruction

“Mom! I’m home.”
“Hi Dear! How was school today? What did you learn?”
“Well… I learned about the Vikings… and I learned how to add fractions… and I learned that it is disrespectful to talk to Johnny while the teacher is giving us a lesson.”

Admittedly, the above dialog is not entirely likely, but it illustrates what a child might say if he or she were aware of what is referred to as the hidden curriculum in education. Few of us will argue that all that we learned at school was contained in the subject matter we were taught. If we were to carefully look back upon our scholastic experience, we would realize that the experience was one that was full of socialization. We learned what an appropriate response to an insult would be; we learned that we should address adults with respect; we learned that it is proper to queue for things instead of shoving our way to the front of the line. Indeed you could say that we were not just taught our right from left, but also our right from wrong. That is exactly where the hidden curriculum becomes tricky. Should moral education be a part of a school’s curriculum, or is this something that should be left to the socialization a child gets at home?

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