Progressive Education

The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) has awarded Bryn Mawr College a grant of up to $300,000 to evolve STEM teaching over the next three years to make BMC computer and information science programs more culturally accessible and substantive!

Liz McCormack, chair and professor of the Physics Department at Bryn Mawr College, leads this initiative, assisted by Doug Blank and Mark Matlin. The college will use this funding to develop online computing or programming instructional modules that the physics department can insert throughout curricula. These additions will supply students with exposure to new and innovative computing and information science skills.

These leaders hope this initiative will act as a model for other departments at Bryn Mawr as well as for other schools, especially those interested in increasing computer and information science exposure across the curriculum, in part, to reach a more diverse range of students than those that traditionally enter those fields.

VoiceThread is a user-friendly way to share power point presentations, videos, photos, and other media. Students and professors can record video or audio responses, draw on the media to highlight certain points, and comment in text form. This site is useful for discussion outside of the classroom, allowing students to focus on the topic at hand and reflect in a collaborative way.

Want to Learn More?
Read how VoiceThread describes its capabilities.

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Capabilities

Through VoiceThread...

Professors can:

• Upload power points
• Upload question slides for comment
• Comment on students’ writing in video, text, and visual formats

Students can:

            The phrase "feminism unbound" is strange to me. I thought at first I understood it, but when we began to discuss this phrase in class, I got even more confused. So I sat down to think about it on my own. I thought about the rigors of society, the boundaries have set for ourselves and others, the world we have been told should exist. As someone who has chosen to go to an all-women's college I know I follow certain boundaries within the walls of Bryn Mawr College, regulations the college sets for me. I began to think of similar institutions. A friend of mine also goes to a single-sex institution, Wabash College, an all-men's college in Indiana. Wabash sets regulations for its students as well. A potential new regulation is a gender studies graduation requirement. This debate struck a chord with me, especially when I discovered the contorted view of gender studies some members of the institution had created around this issue . . .

            "[The] wimpy, neutralized guys that gender feminists are trying to create:  men who are not committed to constructive struggle and conflict and fighting for a cause and coming out the winner." (Michaloski and Allman) This statement was made by Dr. David P. Kubiak, a Classics professor at Wabash College in relation to the debate at Wabash over the proposition of a gender studies graduation requirement.

Hi everyone, please download the following files for my curriculum and my rationale.

So this week, in terms of ed placement I've been trying to discover more of Asian culture in relation to America. In my placement I figure out that I knew nothing of the Asian American experience even thought I want to honor everyone's diversity in my classroom someday. I wouldn't have picked up on this if it hadn't been for my suburban placement having only white and asian kids. I was taught to look at majority and minority balances in terms of possible difference and then I thought "Oh no, I want to teach at a suburban school someday, but white culture is easy to adapt to, what do I do with the Asians?" This was really weird for me because I pride myself on being multiculturally sensitive becuase of my backgrounds, and what was even weirder is that my best friend since 3rd grade is Viet, but I still don't feel like I know how her race and culture relate to her experience. For some reason, that racial experience has always been invisible to me, despite my exposure to literature about the Hmong in the US and other groups. I decided to reconsile this dissonace by bugging my asian friends to help me learn more and I hope to take an Asian American history/culture class before I graduate. I can't believe I didn't notice one of the biggest groups in America in my quest to be inclusive. I'm really embarressed about this, but at least now I know and I can work towards making that better. 

Maddy Beckmann
January 29, 2013
Table of Contents of my Education

Seven Schools in Thirteen Years

I. School #1: My Montessori Education, All I remember is making bread...
II. School #2: My Co-ed Catholic Education, I am not catholic...
III. School #3: My Public Education: Too many kids in my class...
IV. School #4: My Experiencial Education: Taking Ownership of My Learning...

Standing up at the podium with a hundred people in front of my I opened my mouth to speak. I am the last of my class to speak to the audience. At this point 27 students have gone before me and I know I must try to keep the audience’s attention for just one more speech. I opened my mouth to speak my first speech in front of an audience. It was easy. I spoke about my love for people and for helping them. I spoke about making the world a better place and what I love to do. I finished the speech and was greeted by the first standing ovation of my class.

Hey everybody, I don't really know if this has any place in this Ecological Imaginings class, but maybe if we can imagine the preservation of women to be a form of ecology, not unlike the preservation of all plant life, animal life.

I just wanted to call everyone's attention to this excellent documentary currently being shown on PBS on Mon & Tues nights at 9:00 PM.  I imagine you guys have lots of time to watch films, yeah!  But this is an amazing series.

"Half the Sky" about gender based violence.

Here's the link to the first & second segment:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2283557115   

http://video.pbs.org/video/2283558278

Hello beautiful Serendip world! 

My name is Briana Bellamy, I'm a BMC alum '11.  Recently, I returned from an incredible year of living in Nepal, working on a project funded by the Davis Projects for Peace grant. The project was called Sharing Knowledge for Peace, and its basic structure and philosophy grew from something that may be very familiar to some of you: the Teaching and Learning Initiative (TLI). As a sophomore at Bryn Mawr, I became involved with the staff-student branch of the TLI as a student mentor with a wonderful man from transportation services. It completely transformed my experience at Bryn Mawr, and became a huge part of both my sense of community and personal development. The relationships I built through the reciprocal model of the TLI and the deep learning I experienced both in these relationships and in the reflection meeting had a deep impact on me. I went on to become a coordinator for the program, and even wrote my thesis about it, exploring the inner workings of friendship, community, and shared spaces. I knew there was something powerful about the dynamics at play, and I was curious as to how the model of intentional reciprocal teaching and learning relationships could be valuable in other settings. 

After skyping with the founder of an NGO which provides libraries and Ghanaian children novels in Ghana (I forgot the name of the NGO but I believe Kathy Knowles is the name of the founder) and learning more about the history of formal education in Ghana, I became to reflect a lot about what could be done to improve the education system in Ghana. According to Ms. Knowles, literacy is a problem in Ghana because reading is not seen as a leisurable activity, and is only associated with academic work. Moreover, education there is based upon repetition and memorizatioon, thus school can be very boring and dry to students. Also, students are constantly anxious about being graded since the whole curriculum and attitude of the teachers is based upon doing well on the exams. Additionally, I personally feel that such a system does not cultivate appreciation for the art of learning. We've virtually discussed (via twitter) the importance of making mistakes for one's learning and education. However, such a system in Ghana appears to leave no room for mistakes, or creativity for that matter. These aspects along with many others compose Ghana's education system and consequently do not appear to be conducive towards a positive, fun, and interesting learning atmosphere for students (or the teachers).