Co-ed Dorms

Overall, the topics were very diverse and unique! I wanted to comment more about Jess' presentation on co-ed dorms. I had no idea that Liz Waters was recently turned into a co-ed dorm. I think it would be a great addition to your paper if you could find any information on that. I thought the idea about co-ed rooms was really interesting and controversial. With that topic, I agree that it could be incorporated into your paper by the structure you had: history, co-ed dorms, and co-ed rooms.

Great job everyone! :)

Second Round of Oral Presentations

I found the topic of co-ed housing to be very interesting. I believe that there would definitely be a difference between single-sex and co-ed floors. I love living on a co-ed floor at UW because I find that there's less drama between the girls on our floor. I can't believe that schools like U-Penn and Brown are starting to have co-ed rooms! That seemed shocking to me considering the issues that could potentially arise in that area. But in some respects it doesn't seem like such a bad idea either. The topic of geography in primary schooling was very interesting to me. I think geography is definitely a subject that requires more attention in k-12 schooling as well as at the collegiate level. Inclusion was also an attention grabbing topic. I found it interesting that the student at hand had not experienced special education within her classes because that has always been a part of my schooling. Co-teaching was also a topic that I hadn't come across and look forward to learning more of in the future. Overall, interesting topics!

Inclusion in Schools

During the presentation, you talked about conflict among the teachers for inclusion. In my classes at elementary schools we had a girl named Alexis who was in all my classes and she had an assistant teacher with her at all times. The assistant teacher was only there to help Alexis though. Once or twice she taught a lesson but her main job was to help Alexis with her homework. We never had any problems with teacher conflict between Alexis's helper and our main teacher.
Maybe during your paper you could talk about a way for the conflict to be resolved. You could discuss the possibility of the teacher assistant only being there to help the special needs child and not teach the class. It's hard enough to follow one teacher's way of teaching let alone two and with them arguing, its even harder.
Overall I really liked your presentation and I thought you expressed your ideas very clearly.

Monday, April 19th Presentations

Hello everyone!

Thanks for the helpful advice, everyone. I will definitely use Malika and Emma's input for my research -- I never thought looking at private v.s. public differences. I will also definitely put some more true facts into my paper, as Colleen suggested.

For Jess and Lisa: again, I'm amazed by the high-level topics that our class has chosen. Jess, I would definitely keep focusing in on why it became necessary to start doing Co-Ed housing by looking at the positive and negatives; just make sure that you talk about positives and negatives for Co-Ed and Single-Sex each. It was a little confusing in class, but I'm sure you were going to do that anyway. I also like your idea about going chronologically in order to organize your paper -- but also talk about the future if you do so. Lisa's topic was very interesting and close to me since I have a sibling with disabilities. The steps he had to take and the assistance he got through schooling definitely helped, and he took plenty of classes with other regular students throughout his high school career. It sounds though that you may want to look for one or two more sources that emphasize why teachers have more impact than the actual student in their inclusion or lack thereof. Multiple sources that report similar findings, such as the teachers who don't work well with each other, will make a strong point for your paper and help you answer all of your questions.

Again, great job, everyone! I look forwards to Wednesday.

Also, if you are still interested in seeing that video, just for kicks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww.
Poor Miss South Carolina.

Coed, Geography, Intensive Education

The second day of presentations included a wide variety of topics within the field of education. All the presentations were interesting in their own right. I especially thought Jess’s presentation to pose an interesting subject.

The idea of coed rooms is fascinating, and is a great question for this project. Little information has been fielded on this topic, which appears to be a growing trend at major institutions of education. A collaboration of the minimal studies would contribute greatly to the understanding of the issue.

With reference to the historic integration of the sexes into dorms, possible benefits and problems of coed rooms can be understood. History marks future possibilities.

Overall, great job everyone, and best of luck.

Presentations: Day 2

I thought presentations for today went pretty well. Jess's topic on co-ed dorms is interesting particularly because it affects all college students whether we realize it does or not. Her power point went well and I think, with her ideas, her paper will also turn out well. Greg's presentation was also interesting. I think the class was shocked with how many people in the U.S don't know where Louisiana is. It would be great if Greg included eye opening facts like that in his paper in order to get his point across. Lisa's presentation also proved to be an attention grabber. She asked the class questions which really helped in getting the class to discuss her topic. I think if she includes research from articles about new ways or ideas for incorporating learning disabled children into general education classes it would help with her paper a lot. I know that at my school incorporating learning disabled students into classes with other kids was difficult. At the high school level, a lot of learning disabled students can't keep up with certain classes like chemistry or higher level history, sometimes even art. It's unfortunate, and I feel that allowing impaired students to go to regular classes does permit them to experience the same things as everybody else for once. At the same time, I know of a few teachers that were frustrated at the fact that they had to give learning disabled students more of their time and effort, which may have already been spread tightly enough as it was.

April 19th Response

All of today's topics were intriguing and easy to relate to. As far as coed dorms go, that is normal for me. It is difficult to imagine a dorm area without it. Obviously here the dorms are coed and my friends schools all live in coed dorms as well. I don't think there is anything wrong with them and the benefits discussed in the presentation were spot on. The topic of geography in education was very interesting. In my schooling I was tested multiple times in social studies classes and geography units on countries and states and what not, but I do know many schools that hardly touched on it. It is insane the amount of people that are unfamiliar with the geography of the United States. I definitely agree that education of geography should be emphasized. The last presentation about inclusion and co-teaching was very easy to relate to. All through elementary, middle, and high school, inclusion was practiced in my schools. As a student, I never really experienced the second teacher actually teaching so I'm not sure that the plan of co-teaching worked completely as planned. The complication in co-teaching was never brought to my attention but after listening to the presentation I feel it is important for teachers to figure out how to communicate and teacher together well to benefit not only themselves but the students and the classroom community.

Day 2 of Presentations

Todays presentations were all well done and very interesting to listen to. The topic of inclusion and co-teaching with special needs students caught my attention because just this weekend this topic came up in conversation with a teacher. I think this is a very difficult subject, but the aspect Lisa is focusing on is intriguing and a very good solution to the problem. Communication and acknowledgement seem to be the most important factors for successful teaching of special needs students. I think Malika had a good point to say about Greg's presentations because at my school (private) we had to learn the countries of every continent as well as all the states and capitals. Geography was tied into our social studies classes so it is important to see how geography is implemented within other disciplines. Jess's subject was also interesting because coed living is how life really works where men and women aren't separated. I think that the negative aspects can be contributed to also a students first year at university.