C4Ta Post #2 (William Chamberlain)

  Blogger, William Chamberlain, on April 14th, 2014 posted a blog to his blog site #WmChamberlain asking the question, "Why do I have to learn History?" Chamberlain states that he was asked this very question by one of his students, he also says he could not give the student an immediate answer. After some time thinking about the question and researching online, Chamberlain still could not give his student an answer, therefore, he asked this question on his blog.

  After pondering the question,"Why do we need to learn History,"I believe I have come up with an answer. Without learning about History, man-kind would be doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Let's look at the "Bay of Pigs Invasion" which took place in 1961. United States government felt it needed a resolution to the growing socialist threat in our very own back yard, Cuba. A plan was formed to have American soldiers invade Cuba and ultimately take out the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. The plan failed miserably. American soldiers died, the United States was embarrassed, and it ultimately strengthened Cuba's will to continue to a socialist government system. This plan, which never sounded good from the beginning, came into action because of "group think." Group think occurs when certain people are afraid to speak up against the popular vote, for fear of being exiled from the group. It can also occur when you know an idea is horrible, but once you hear it enough times, it eventually sounds good. The United State learned from this event, and now, in order to prevent events like this from happening again the government uses precautions such as, bringing someone into the group strictly be a devil's advocate, rotating members of the group, etc...If the leaders of today, as well as us, did not make an effort to review history and its lessons, who knows where the United States would be as a country today.

  Almost one month later, June 15th, William Chamberlain posted a blog entitled, "I Admit It, I Am Biased. I Prefer Classroom Teacher Led Sessions." In this blog post, Mr. Chamberlain discusses his feelings about attending conferences, where it seems that the entire conference was simply to teach teachers about all the new tools teachers could potentially use in a classroom, yet they have never been actually used tested and evaluated on actual students. He expresses some frustration with this message, stating that "I have never presented at a conference and shown tools I have not used. I always share what worked for my students and what I felt didn't." Chamberlain's overall message is, the point of using educational tools in technology within the classroom shouldn't always be about discovering the new technology or fad, but using tools that can truly help the students learn and add value to the educators lesson plan. I can say that I certainly agree with this statement. Also, I have recently added Mr. Chamberlain to my PLN through Twitter. To visit his blog site you may go to wmchamberlain.blogspot.com