Event #2~ Promising Practices

My second event was the Promising Practices conference here at RIC. The theme of this conference was STEM Education in Urban Environments. The keynote speaker was Dr. Christopher Edmin who is a leading scholar in Urban Education. What Dr. Edmin spoke about in his keynote was how we need to teach the who are students in our hip-hop generation differently.We can not use the traditional teaching ways that were used on us when we were in school.

During the keynote address I remembered one of the articles we have read in class, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky. The topic Dr. Edmin spoken about had the same idea we read about and discussed in class. We cannot teach students who are in a digital age the same way we were taught because times have changed. Dr. Edmin spoke about how some of his students could rap Newton’s Laws of Motion but when it came time to write it on paper they would not be able too. In a ‘traditional’ educational setting the student would get the description of Newton's Law of Motion wrong if he or she rapped it but if we were teaching for the hip-hop generation it would be correct.

What I took from keynote address was a more general theory. That we as youth workers need to remember that each youth is different and learns differently. We cannot use old techniques to teach new students. Also, that it is important to incorporate what our youth are interested in.  For example, when reviewing for an exam instead of sitting in front of the classroom asking questions to each student turn that into a game of Jeopardy; have teams, use real bells and have prizes. Students will be more engaged with the review and will retain more information. Learning should be fun for youth and the more they are engaged to the material the more successful they will do.  

This is a video of Dr.Christopher Edmin at a TED Talks