Below are the 24 questions our students created after several days of discussion on Essential Questions (click here to see the post on the build up to these questions).  The questions are ALL student created and we hope to use their ideas and desire to understand pave the way for learning this year.  

1. How do art and music affect how people live?
2. Why did civilizations start where they did?
3. How have past leaders affected the modern day?
4. How has U.S. culture changed the world?
5. How did people live before philosophy and science/how did the world change when it was discovered?
6. How has war changed the world for better or worse?
7. Why do people have religion/why are there different religions?
8. Why do people separate themselves based on differences?
9. How does war affect society?
10. Why is trade important?
11. How does music affect/influence people in different societies?
12. How does architecture evolve?
13. How do the choices you make affect the world?
14. What does it mean to have power?
15. Why is there conflict between societies?
16. How has war evolved throughout time?
17. How does the institutionalization of education effect societies?
18. Why do you think women have almost never had equal rights?
19. Why do people in some countries suffer for things that are basic human rights?
20.  Why do we fear what we don’t know.
21. How did the Europeans Explore t he World when have no modern technology?
22 What would have happened if Jesus was never born?
23. Why are some people free and others not?
24. Why is education unequal?
25. How do we know what we know is real?

Our students put a great deal of effort into making this list.  We hope you will comment on this post, so we can share with them your favorites and maybe even your own essential questions.   By the way, one of my favorites is #25, Thanks 8 period. 

To learn more about essential questions see my diigo account(GarthHolman) 

It’s Thursday, it’s the week before Spring Break and my head is swimming with all of the changes I want to make next year in my teaching.  As I go through the school year, I keep a journal of the days activities and what I liked/hated.  It’s hard to wait five months to make changes.  Sure I change things on a daily basis as I move from one class to another, but some changes must be implemented in the beginning of the year.  At an in-service concerning co-teaching yesterday, the speaker used the term “collaborative culture”.  I think that I have not done the best I can at creating a collaborative culture with my students.   So below are three goals I have set for myself to begin next year.  The biggest challenge I think these will pose is my reputation.  Students, most students, enjoy my class because I am pretty organic; often several conversations going on simultaneously, students working independently and collaborating, listen to music, to lectures, to stories, reading, sharing life lessons and experiences.  I have the reputation of being fun, easy going and sporadic.  My personality as a teacher is spurred on by my students’ willingness to learn in new ways.  It also takes a great deal of trust and independence on the part of my students to get the most out of my class.  I do not work in traditional ways, so it is often hard for students to enter my world and then return to 7th grade as usual.  Sometimes my methods get away from me; sometimes I loose my academic focus because I am constantly questioning (with Garth and Jenna) why it is that we continue to do things to old way.  Anyways, here are my top three changes for next year:

1. Start the year off doing a lot more work with what it means to be a digital citizen
    I teach social studies; at the heart of my subject is the idea of citizenship.  I plan to do much more with explaining the idea of     a citizen and of digital citizenship in my students at the beginning of the year.  I think that a greater understanding of our rights     and responsibilities as citizens and digital learners will help my students feel more freedom to find their own knowledge.  I         also think that it will help students get more out of my class, In order for me to give students an open learning environment is     if they understand their role in what we are doing.

2. Location, Location, Location
    The more I teach social studies and talk about the modern day world with students, the more I see the need for the                     fundamental understanding of geography.  Not longitude/latitude and the compass rose; I ‘m talking why do we live by rivers,     how does building a city change the flora and fauna, how does cold weather effect the spread of disease and the fact Africa is     not a country.  GoogleEarth is an amazing tool and students absolutely love using it.  I plan on talking geography at least one     day a week.  Distances people must travel to trade or fight, finding natural resources, etc.  I want to become the geography         teacher of the future.  Utilizing technology (GoogleEarth, USGS, NOAA, etc)

3. Its not the Destination, it’s the Journey
    My favorite quote as a motorcyclist, it’s the first patch I sewed on my leather jacket.  This is applicable to the 7th grade too!          All my students and myself will end up at the same point come early June.  I will leave all my students at the shores of North     America during the Age of Exploration.  I want my students to focus more on their individual learning process, I want them to     become conscious of how they take tests, how they learn and how they discover answers.  I want to create thinkers, not just     8th graders.

-Mike

Six students came to the conference on March 18, 2011 and they did what we as teachers always do.  They documented the day.  The following three you-tubes were made at the conference.  They had five hours to build these video's from 12 hours of film footage.  Mike and I are very proud of their the work they did and the engagement of the 400 teachers from North East Ohio. 

I have been using inspiration for about five years and Mike has been using it since he student taught with me.  He now uses Bubbl.us or mywebspiration (free at this time) since his building did not buy inspiration.  However, if 30-40 percent of your students are visual, we need to be using webs for our students benefit.  These software's help students understand, see connections, and learn the material we teach.  

I posted this little visual blog because of the email I got yesterday.  It was from Brittany. 

Thanks! I downloaded the free trial but couldn't connect my netbook to
the Smartboard, so I just used Webspiration from the teacher's
computer.. My group is teaching a unit on writing a research paper, so
after the kids do their research and have their notecards they're
going to make an inspiration web and then convert it to an outline to
help them write their papers. It's also a great way to help them
generate ideas before we take them to the library. Thanks for
introducing me to the software!

We need teachers to find ways, like Brittany, to make school work for our students.  The old software's still have value.