Cell Phones: Education Technology and Learning

Our most-recent guest lecturer was Liz Kolb from the University of Michigan. I really appreciated her personal anecdote about her academic struggles in middle, lower and high school. Perhaps her struggles say more about our educational system than her mis-diagnosed learning disabilities – that is, the systems inability to offer differentiated instruction. Perhaps her case-study offers further insight into how we, as educators, can differentiate/individualize our instruction. Not all students “score” well on standardized tests. But in our current system, we tend to relegate those students to the back of the class, labeling them as “special needs,” underperforming, or slow. Perhaps we could graft our curriculum into our students’ daily lives, as Liz suggested. Cell phones, she informed us, is one device to connect with our students. Cell phones, when used for educational purposes, help us, and our students, become more socially-emotionally engaged with, for example, current events, historical monuments, wireless technology, and each other.

Framing Textbook Terms Around Essential Questions?

I’ve posted some of my reflections about the use/misuse of terms in AP US history. I’ve also posted an excerpt from a student’s notebook. For convenience, let’s call this anonymous student Napoleon, whose notes are posted below.

Completing Terms takes a lot of time. Students tell me they typically spend about 10-15 hours per week on their terms alone (Daily Routines, 4.5). In theory, the students are expected to read the textbook, which, in the case of Chapter 7, amounts to 33 pages of densely written text, before answering the terms. However, in the hectic world of high school, during which time many of the students are also involved in extracurricular activities, this generally doesn't happen. They often choose the path of least resistance. 

Rather than read the chapter and then answer the terms, which helps situate the terms in their proper historical context, they tend to comb the chapter, find the term, and copy a paragraph or two out of the textbook. This week's focus question was on Camp-Meeting Revivals, i.e., The Second Great Awakening that swept across the religious landscape of antebellum America. The revivalists, the so-called movers and shakers, are conspicuously absent from Napoleon’s notes on the Second Great Awakening. Where, for example, is the evangelist Charles Finney, in Napoleon’s account?

The textbook devoted 8 pages out of 33 (or nearly 25% of the chapter) on revivalism, including two pages on Finney, whose life and legacy are sketched in the textbook. The problem that Napoleon and many of his classmates struggled with was how to "discriminate" such a large chunk of reading. His notes suggest that he has failed to fully understand the significance of The Second Great Awakening, not to mention the central role played by Finney, the so-called Founder of Modern Revivalism. This is due, in large part, to the absence of an essential question to direct his 8-pages of reading for this term.

For example, one essential question could have been thus: Why was the Second Great Awakening so Great? Framing the term around an essential question would have helped Napoleon (and the 120 other students who are currently taking AP US History) to focus on the evangelical reformers and their big ideas. The Second Great Awakening was great because it was so far-reaching and wide-ranging. It affected both men and women, white and black, rich and poor, north and south. It was Great because it spread across the American religious landscape, from New England in the North to Georgia in the South; from seaport cities to frontier settlements. One of the legacies of the Second Great Awakening was the Abolitionist Movement, the coalition of whites and blacks opposed to slavery. To support their cause, they frequently quoted Jesus' statements about treating others with respect and love. White Christians in the South, however, did not view slavery as a sin. Rather, their leaders were able to quote many Biblical passages in support of slavery. The Civil War and the divide over the question of slavery thus began in the nation's churches, a decade before fighting began on the battlefields. All of this, however, is absent from the overwhelming majority of the student's notes, including Napoleon’s, despite the fact that the chapter had two sub-headings clearly identified as: EVANGELICALS AND SLAVERY and THE BEGINNINGS OF AFRICAN AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY. Framing the Second Great Awakening around an essential question could have helped students such as Napoleon navigate his way through the religious landscape of antebellum America. In so doing, it would have contributed to the Development of Intellectual Character (Benchmark, 4.1) while exercising higher cognitive processes (Smoothly Functioning Learning Community, 4.3).

What do you think?

Dr. Henry Sampson (ca. 1629-1700)

The intellectual geography of Henry Sampson, ejected fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and silenced rector of Framlingham, Suffolk, reached far beyond the borders of Anglo-Dutch dissent. Turning to medicine, Sampson studied at the Italian University of Padua (near Venice), where he matriculated on 27 August 1666, before transferring to the Dutch University of Leiden via Schaffhausen (near Zurich) in 1667. Sampson entered Leiden University on 30 December 1667. He was inscribed in the matriculation register as 35 years old, a student of medicine, and living with Domine Matthew Newcomen op de Papengracht, a canal (by then filled in) parallel with part of the Rapenburg, one of the town’s principal canals, or grachten, on which the main university building (Academiegebouw) is located. Together with fellow Bartholomeans such as Robert Brinsley, Edward Hulse, and George Long, Sampson studied iatrochemistry with Franciscus Sylvius, botany with Florentius Schuyl, and anatomy and surgery with Johannes van Horne.

From Leiden Sampson shared the latest Dutch medical ideas and practices with the Swiss physician Johann Jakob Wepfer, with whom he had studied in Schaffhausen as a private student. Sampson also exchanged praxeos medicae idea nova with Johann von Muralt, who, after studying in Switzerland, Holland, England, and France, went on to become professor of medicine at the University of Zurich. Muralt finished his studies in medicine at Leiden one month before Sampson, with whom he remained closely connected for the rest of the century.

After seven months of medical training at Leiden, Sampson produced a doctoral thesis on chemical processes. As a student of Sylvius, Sampson proposed to cure contraries by contraries, Contraria Contrariis Curari, a title no doubt drawn from Hippocrates. Published by the printer to the university, the thesis had a traditional format, although its length made it one of the thicker contemporary theses. Printed in closely spaced Latin, this quarto consisted of twenty-two pages of text divided into thirty-seven propositions that he publicly defended before the Senatus Academicus. Sampson dedicated his dissertation to Newcomen, with whom he lodged, and professors van Horne and Sylvius, who influenced his medical practice. Johannes Cocceius, professor of theology at Leiden and Rector Magnificus of the University that year, seems to have had little to do with this thesis other than to chair the promotion committee. Sampson passed his medical exam on 28 June and, after a public defence, was promoted doctor of medicine on Thursday, 12 July 1668.

Sampson's letter to Dr. Wepfer, dated Feb. 19/29, 1668, is attached below. I came across his letter during the course of my studies at Leiden University, Department of Special Collections. How might a primary source such as this be used in a high school history course? And for what purpose(s)?