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Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching. Title of course: Environmental Issues in National Parks What prompted the idea for the course? The University of Tennessee is a natural fit for this course, with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and all the learning opportunities it offers being only a one-hour drive away. Although I did not create this course, I jumped at the opportunity to serve as an instructor for it. Growing up as a Boy Scout, and later a merit badge counselor, I found a love for place-based education. I have always valued using the outdoors to teach about the theoretical concepts shared in the classroom. What does the course explore? Each week of the semester we discuss an ongoing environmental issue and then dive into an applied case study in a different national park. For examp...

Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching. Title of course: “Learn AI-Assisted Python Programming” What prompted the idea for the course? Generative AI is really good at computer programming – to the point where the way we teach and assess students who are learning to program must change. We used to give students dozens or hundreds of small targeted programming tasks, drilling each aspect of the syntax – the words and symbols – of programming. That worked well as a starting point, except now generative AI tools can solve all of these problems. Educators can try to ban these tools (good luck with that!), or embrace them. We chose to embrace them in our new course, where students learn to program – supported by a generative AI assistant. What does the course explore? The course re-imagines what learn...

Photo, top: Acting Chief George Nichols stands behind a podium hand-constructed by Bristol-Plymouth Carpentry and Computer-Aided Drafting/Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) student s. (Photo Courtesy Dighton Police Department) Superintendent Alex Magalhaes is pleased to share that Bristol-Plymouth Regional Technical School Carpentry and Computer-Aided Drafting/Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM)  student s recently designed and built a wooden podium for the Dighton Police Department. During the month of December, junior Carpentry student s Justin Deangelis and Casey Williams embarked on a two-week community service project to prepare a new wooden Dighton Police podium . Each year, Bristol-Plymouth Tech provides services to community members and organizations as part of its vocational-technical programs as a way to provide authentic learning opportunities for students.  Deangelis and Williams were joined by CAD/CAM senior student Jason Awalt, who wa...

GARCIA — Time has barely ticked forward in a 150-year-old schoolhouse near Colorado’s southern edge, where hundreds of dusty books line wooden shelves, worn desks lie entangled in a clumsy pile and a few faded white numbers and letters linger on the dark green chalkboard. Stepping inside is almost like walking into a time capsule — one that a local school district is ready to reopen to restore and return the building to its original use: educating kids who live in a remote pocket of Colorado, many from low-income families. “You think about everything that we’re trying to do with education now and then you look in here and you think about everything they were doing with what they had then,” said Toby Melster, superintendent of Centennial School District R-1, while visiting the schoolhouse in February. “The ones that did teach the kids here were probably saying the same thing (as us): ‘If I only had, if I only had.’” The San Luis district of nearly 190 students in prescho...

Uvalde students staged a walkout to protest gun violence. Students of the Uvalde Independent Consolidated School District staged a walkout on Wednesday to protest gun violence, acknowledging the 19 elementary school children and two teachers who were killed after the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last May. Uvalde students said they took inspiration from students in Nashville, Tennessee, who conducted a massive walkout on Monday related to The Covenant School shooting, which left three children and three faculty members dead. That walkout has led to days of peaceful protest ing at the Tennessee state house. Students gathered on the lawn inside the fences of the school, which were put up after the shooting and soon started making their way toward the perimeter. Students walk out of class to protest gun violence, on April 5, 2023, in Uvalde, Texas. Kate Holland/ABC News MORE: What we know about the victims of the Texas school shooting in Uvalde so far Junior hig...