Saturday, February 28, 2015

Keeping up With Super PACs (and why you should ditch your textbook)

In my school I am the social studies chair and in that role I have an ongoing dispute with a good friend who is the chair of the math department.  I keep giving him a hard time saying that math teachers should be embracing the Internet since it is written by math majors and he keeps clinging to his old school math textbooks claiming that students retain more by using paper books.

The Vox link here on super PACs is why I argue that we should teach our students to better learning using online resources.  After all even if you have an old school math textbook, you can still be diverted by a smartphone (which no researcher seems to want to add to their research in paper vs e-books!).  

Case in point is the link above which explains, not just super PACs, dark money, McCutcheon v. FEC but all the Citizens United v. FEC - all of which came about AFTER the e-book (we still have to use a six year contract in my county for electronic books, rather than get yearly updates - an old world problem clashing with modern technology) was put online.  Really, think about the technology you were using six years ago (the average length of a textbook) and think how much your teaching has evolved (or not if you are still using paper because of belief systems or lack of funding).  All of which is to say my textbook is going the way of the Dodo bird because of the many resources we can use in class and my students can easily access on the smartphones they walk into my class with each day.  

Here is an article talking about the "first primary" in the presidential race - the one to raise money for individual and super PACs.  

By the way one of my late spring or summer projects is going to be to put all of my assignments, flipped videos, etc. for AP US Government and AP Comparative Government on a Google Drive document so you too can choose to teach your students as they learn best - on the cloud! 

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