I just wanted to give my readers (hello...you are out there, right?) a little heads-up about what's "coming soon" on rachlovestheweb. First up, I'm definitely going to continue my exciting journey of discovery about what popular culture can teach us about the way schooling and education is now, how it could/should be, and might be in the future. I even have in mind which stories from popular fiction I want to explore next. First up, I'm going to look at the FOX television series House, M.D, a series I have been dedicatedly following for 5 seasons. I'm going to look at House (the character) as a teacher, and contrast his teaching approaches and characteristics as a teacher to some ideas in the literature about teaching and learning for the 21st century.
This might take me a little while to do, because I need to do a bit more research on two fronts. First, I need to go back and watch a few key episodes from earlier seasons. Second, I'm going to attempt to engage input into my analysis with the input of other House fans - who I'll access both from my personal family and friend networks (people I know), and from online fan discussion forums (people I don't know). As a prelude to the latter research strategy, I've been "lurking" on a fansite for the past couple of weeks, and I'm almost ready to step out from the shadows...
After the House research, I'm going to try to look at some stories from popular fiction that give us the ability to speculate about what education/schooling might be like in the future. I think this is probably going to steer me into the world of science fiction, and I've got one book in mind, Neal Stephenson's cyberpunk novel The Diamond Age. I'd love to get suggestions about any other examples you can think of which give interesting representations of education and schooling of the future - so if you've got suggestions, send them my way!
Showing posts with label contemplating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label contemplating. Show all posts
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Shabbat, Old Skool-styles
This weekend I spent Shabbat in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. It was quite an experience, staying with two friends (one of whom is Orthodox) at a religious women's hostel in the heart of the Jewish Quarter.
Although I don't normally keep shabbat (ok, I don't ever keep shabbat), I really enjoyed the Old-Skool Shabbat experience. The Jewish Quarter is full of Yeshivot (schools for study of Torah) and many many Jewish outreach programmes and experiences. We took advantage of one of these - Shabbat Hospitality. What happens is on Friday nights, after Shabbat comes in, you can go and meet a very comedic guy called Jeff Seidel who will send you to the home of a Jewish family for Shabbat dinner. You can do the same on Saturday for lunch. We went to two different homes and had two exceptional meals with our generous hosts. The people were so welcoming and I really appreciated the opportunity to glimpse inside Jewish Orthodox life. Although Orthodox Judaism is not for me, I am endlessly fascinated by people who seek to live every aspect of their lives in keeping with the codes of conduct and teachings of the Torah. As always, I heard and saw things I could relate to, and things that I couldn't relate to at all. At times I felt connected to K'lal Yisrael and at other times, felt like a separate species of Jew from my hosts. But this is Israel, and the longer I am here and the more I read and learn, the more complex this place becomes for me.
This past week I have also become more conscious of the "bubble" that we could potentially be encased in at WUJS, in our quiet little desert town. Just outside our carefully and richly designed programme lies a country that is rent by religious, cultural, social, and political tensions. Some of these tensions are beginning to become the centrepieces of our seminars and fieldtrips. Tomorrow, for example, we are going to visit some Bedouin sites to find out more about the issues and challenges for this group of people. Next week we will focus on "Jerusalem's seam line" - the East-West divide that sits at the heart of so many of Israel's deepest problems. We look at these issues in our seminars too. There is a lot to think about.....
Although I don't normally keep shabbat (ok, I don't ever keep shabbat), I really enjoyed the Old-Skool Shabbat experience. The Jewish Quarter is full of Yeshivot (schools for study of Torah) and many many Jewish outreach programmes and experiences. We took advantage of one of these - Shabbat Hospitality. What happens is on Friday nights, after Shabbat comes in, you can go and meet a very comedic guy called Jeff Seidel who will send you to the home of a Jewish family for Shabbat dinner. You can do the same on Saturday for lunch. We went to two different homes and had two exceptional meals with our generous hosts. The people were so welcoming and I really appreciated the opportunity to glimpse inside Jewish Orthodox life. Although Orthodox Judaism is not for me, I am endlessly fascinated by people who seek to live every aspect of their lives in keeping with the codes of conduct and teachings of the Torah. As always, I heard and saw things I could relate to, and things that I couldn't relate to at all. At times I felt connected to K'lal Yisrael and at other times, felt like a separate species of Jew from my hosts. But this is Israel, and the longer I am here and the more I read and learn, the more complex this place becomes for me.
This past week I have also become more conscious of the "bubble" that we could potentially be encased in at WUJS, in our quiet little desert town. Just outside our carefully and richly designed programme lies a country that is rent by religious, cultural, social, and political tensions. Some of these tensions are beginning to become the centrepieces of our seminars and fieldtrips. Tomorrow, for example, we are going to visit some Bedouin sites to find out more about the issues and challenges for this group of people. Next week we will focus on "Jerusalem's seam line" - the East-West divide that sits at the heart of so many of Israel's deepest problems. We look at these issues in our seminars too. There is a lot to think about.....
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