Blog Journal 4 

ELA Technology Standards

I select SS.912. S.7.2, Subject Area: Social Studies, Strand: Sociology, Grades: 9-12

This standard is social problems and how we can analyze a range of the problems in our society today.

One reason I believe I can teach this standard is as a result of having recently taken a Sociology class at F.S.U. which covered a multitude of social topics. This standard will allow the students to analyze their world and take an honest look around them to identify issues that concern them. Issues such as race discrimination, crime and poverty have been in the news media a lot lately. Since I am from Generation “X”, I have lived during times in which issues such as LGBTQ were literally left in the closet. Today, our society has embraced a new attitude towards those that are different. I believe I could teach this standard and incorporate the effects of the different time periods into the lesson with honest and open conversations and dialogs as a jumping on point.

 Educator Toolkit

I would have a lesson on Civil Rights Movement for my 12-grade high school class. We would discuss “The Tallahassee Ten.”

In June 1961 Interfaith Freedom Riders challenged segregated interstate buses by traveling from Washington, D.C. to Tallahassee, Florida. After successfully completing the Freedom Ride they had planned to fly home but first decided to test whether or not the group would be served in the segregated airport restaurant. As a result, 10 Freedom Riders, later known as the Tallahassee Ten, were arrested for unlawful assembly. They were released on bond following their conviction and sentence later that same month which was followed by about 3 years of legal appeals. The 10 original riders later returned to Tallahassee to serve brief jail terms in August 1964 and were released after serving 4 days of their 60-day sentences.

I would utilize YouTube videos, from the internet, and ask the students how they feel when they view videos of civil rights demonstrations from the 1960’s. Next, I would show them videos of civil rights demonstrations for George Floyd, Brianna Taylor which are more recent. I would ask the students if they felt any different when they viewed the videos from the 1960’s compared to the recent ones and if they felt different, why?  Next, I would show black and white photographs which was all that was available at the time utilizing the LCD Projector of the June 1961 Interfaith Freedom Riders and ask them the same question. Did the videos make more of an impact on how you felt compared to just looking at photographs of a similar event?

The point of the differences in the technology used, I would ask the students if they felt more removed from a situation due to the stillness of the photographs. Did it mean less to them or were the videos more impactful.

This was a local, historical event over 62 years ago and it made the headlines.

                                                           Tallahassee Democrat June 1961

Internet Searching

As an educator, it is important to be able to utilize many different resources. It’s just as important to be able to teach students how to properly utilize those resources as well. You must be careful where you obtain your information from. As a teacher we can teach students to look up information however, we need to be mindful of the validity of the information. Learning to recognize what is truth, fiction and nonsense is a skill that is learned after learning the do’s and don’ts of internet searching.

I did not realize that you can do advance searches and reverse searches to aid you in your research. Searching by an actual image is a great resource and I will try this out. This is a helpful tool because on occasion, you will find a picture but don’t know anything about it. Utilizing the search image tool, we can find information on it’s origin.