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Yesterday was the first day of school and I knew I had to figure out a way to keep them awake and interested... I had seen a youtube video in one of my hopkins courses telling facts about the future of the planet and technology and I thought it'd be just the ticket to get them hooked. Even though I teach American government, the facts and information were still applicable. I explained to the students that during a time of such rapid change in technology and change in the needs of the people, the government has to be ready to respond to any and all of these changes. Obviously, the government is SLOW to respond to most anything, but there's a reason for that... Democracy is a process. The more voices you have, the more time it takes to come to a decision. If we wanted a dictatorship, I can imagine things would get done much faster, but not necessarily to our liking. So anyway, I showed the kids the video and for the most part they were impressed. I think they didn't understand some of it, but they could relate to the comments about text messages, myspace, and different things like that. It was a great way to get them interested and looking at government in a completely different way. Last year I briefly touched on the impact of the internet and technology on government, more specifically regarding the speed at which election campaigns function and advertising, but it is really true that as technology grows, government has to reexamine how we function in society and what needs to change. Laws and regulations regarding the internet push our boundaries of freedom of speech and privacy (although "privacy" is not in the constitution, it might be a breach of our freedom from search and seizure), while also juggling the safety of many. It's a difficult line to define, but I think issues like that are what get our students interested in social studies. The racey controversy! I gave a survey to my students to inquire what subject they liked best. Not ONE students said social studies. Many said math or English or science, but no takers on social studies. And why is that? Because we spend so much time in outdated textbooks that the students miss out on the real world applications! Social studies and science are changing the most often and can become the most interesting and applicable to their lives, but teachers choose to go by the book. Once I told kids in my class that we wouldn't use textbooks, they cheered for joy and I was happy too... I also think I won some of those votes back for social studies at that point :-) Allowing technology and current events into our classroom will revolutionize the way our students see school.