Ms. Snow's Social Studies

Is there a moment in your life where you felt that you could have asked more, learned more, and truthfully discovered the meaning of something? Berger's book, A More Beautiful Question , explores the world of questioning from its phrasing of questions, lighting up creativity, to diving deeper into the limits of inquiry in the modern world and the classroom. Yet, are we challenging those thoughts? A cover of Berger's Book I took when getting accepted to MAET! This book challenges one to reflect on how one looks at the world through questioning (Berger, 2014). Are we asking those critical questions that lead us to change our thinking? As a child, we ask many questions, but that is how we learn about something for the first time. As we grow up, we ask fewer "why" questions. So "why" is that? What happened to the creativity? It disappears because we do not take time to engage in the why, what if, and how questions (Berger, 2014, p. 71-134 ). If we go back to our...

QuickFire Conversations Imagine this; you are in a room with school board members, administration, teachers, parents, and students. The topic is a new school policy changing for the next school year that is designated to target cell phones in the classroom. The policy has been shared with the public and even made the news. The mock debate voiced concerns from all perspectives, online and at the school board meeting.  Well, this QuickFire activity was called to session where my classmates and I were assigned roles of various members of the Prescott, Arkansas, community and discussed this hot topic. Our spontaneous roles were given to us at random with little information about our new identity, but even more a lack of information on their recent change. After a given time to research, we "dialed" in our thoughts and began a respectful conversation.  My role in the activity was school board president.  While researching, I dove into the interweb to find information from al...

Let's Talk About Tech! As you grow up and learn new concepts in the world, you create memories from those experiences. Whether those memories are positive or negative, they may stick with you forever, and you will be able to share your adventures. As a teacher and graduate student, I have had experiences I can share and relate to with other students, teachers, or faculty. For me, this was participating in the Michigan State University Educational Technology Summit. We brainstormed applications and tools used in our classroom and graduate-level classes during a QuickFire activity . This information would be the content that we would present for the conference . We created categories and teams to discuss those topics. Well, for me, I was in the MSU Library resources group. I expressed my thoughts about using the library website with my partner. As a beginner at MSU's interworkings, I thought about how we would present the information. The design thinking process and QuickFire com...