2 Podcasts: The Road Between a "Village" and a "Schoolyard'

In the podcast "The Edible Schoolyard", teachers and students use a "garden" as a way of better understanding history, science, math, and life lessons (sharing, working as a team, etc). The learning environment is set up as a "hands on" laboratory - allowing teachers to teach and explain things to students in ways that students can apply to their everyday lives. This, in turn, gives students the motivation and ability to think and learn in a more applicable way.

In the podcast "A Night In the Global Village", teachers and students learn about poverty, by experiencing it first hand (a kind of "sustainable development" lab). The students are split into different groups with limited resources (each group had a different resource - such as water, firewood, and food). For a period of 24 hours, these students must learn to what it is like to survive in poverty stricken conditions, without the conveniences of of electricity or heat (which are often times taken for granted by those who can afford them). Students also learn teamwork (such as "effective bargaining"), as well as valuable life-lessons that only experiences can teach.

As a future teacher, such labs can prove useful in demonstrating skills, lessons, and experiences - many of which cannot be taught out of a textbook. Both of these labs provide a model alternative to what is normally being taught to students in classrooms worldwide. Educational labs such as these also provide students with the chance to open up toward education - seeing it as a way of connecting educational objectives with real-life experiences.

These types of labs can also strengthen the bond between the teacher and the students. Such lessons in education are results of "shared" educational experiences (between the teacher and his/her students), which can help to familiarize students with practical application, as well as give teachers and educators a more endearing role in the eyes of their students - the role of a "mentor". Rather than focus on prolonging the longevity of the traditional "separatist" form of classroom teaching, I feel that both of these podcasts demonstrate to a world -wide audience that education and life are not meant to be divided - especially when taking into consideration all of the ways in which one complements the other.