2nd Response to Presentations

I found Jessica's topic on the development on coed housing very interesting. The pros and cons between same sex and coed dorms was also neat to see. And even with these points I think that students would chose coed over same sex dorms if given the choice. I also think that if she could somehow incorporate the coed rooms into her paper it should allow for a way to portray how quickly residence life is changing.
Greg's topic is one that seemed important to me. I know in my experience that I haven't had as much geography in my education as I would have liked. This education should have more stress put on it in the future.
I thought that Lisa's inclusion topic was very unique because I did not know that there were such programs. I would like to know more about this program of education and see how it has performed.

Presentations Round 2

I was particularly interested in Jess's topic about coed vs. same sex housing and how it may actually have an impact on education and social skills. I think that including the part about moving towards same sex rooms would strengthen the paper by showing how quickly society's views on the subject can change, just as they did by making housing coed.

2nd Set of Presentations

I thought Jess raised a good question with whether your housing situation impacts your grades. But I think that anytime you give someone a chance to pick between a coed or single sex dorm most people would choose the coed dorm even with statistics showing that single sex dorms improve your gpa.
As far Greg's point about Americans needing more geography taught in K-12, I think he wasn't looking on a big enough scale. I think whether or not people are taught geography depends on state and school district curriculum. I know that everyone in my school district had to take Geography during freshman year of high school and that we had to know locations of countries during world history. However if some school districts don't require a geography class and studies show that this adversely effects our education then it should be mandated that everyone must take at least one years worth of geography in high school.
Finally to go with Lisa's topic of Inclusion, I had this program at my high school and it was never a problem. The special needs student was the only one the second teacher ever taught and that was more in the role of a tutor. There was never a clash of teachers over how the class should be taught and it seemed as if the special needs students benefited from the extra assistance.

April 19th Presentations

First of all I'd like to say that presenting our research topics orally really helps with getting things to come together and receiving other peoples opinions and assistance. I was really grateful for all the feedback in class. With that said presentations on Monday were really interesting. Each person portrayed their passion and knowledge in their topics accordingly.

Jess's topic seems to be the most popular as I glanced over blog posts, so following with that trend, I think her paper would be extremely interesting to read and see which conclusions she draws and how or if she incorporates some of the information that she had (about dorms from the 70s).

Lisa's topic was really interesting because I didn't know that schools attempted inclusion. In our school there was basically an entirely separate department for those kids. They had a different curriculum and their own teachers and everything. So hearing about this really broadened my horizons.

Greg's topic address a problem that is very prevalent in the US. I have had many friends from overseas and concerning this topic they all express the same ideas, that the US is lacking in Geography education (both in the location and people senses). I liked that he had ways to get us involved too, with questions and a possible video.

Monday, April 19th Presentations

In Jessica’s presentation about coed housing, it was nice how she included both the positive and negative effects of coed housing in order to get a comparison, which leads her to her argument. I think that she should definitely keep the coed room aspect, because it could be considered the next step/future to coed housing. I also agree that she should go in chronological order in her paper, explaining the history of housing, then specifically about coed housing, and about coed rooms. Greg did a nice job of explaining the role of geography in education, and that it is not only just about maps, but that it is human, cultural, and physical as well. I think he could possibly include some information pertaining to why geography is covered so minimally in schools in comparison to other classes. In his presentation, I liked his idea to put a quiz question in at the end since it helped the class get more involved. I think Lisa’s topic of inclusion and co-teaching sounds interesting, because I have never heard anything about it before. I know that the benefits of the teachers are her main focus, but I think it would be nice to see the benefits and costs for the students as well. I would be curious to see if inclusion possibly hinders the other students’ learning. Overall, I really liked all of the topics discussed in presentations.