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Showing posts from January, 2020

Democracy in the middle of the war

The United States has never delayed a presidential election. But there was one instance in which some wondered if the country should: when the nation was embroiled in the Civil War. The 1864 election was the second U.S. presidential election to take place during wartime (the first was during the War of 1812). Still, it wasn’t the logistics of carrying out a wartime election that made some people want to postpone it. Rather, it was the fact that by the spring of 1864, the Union had no clear path to victory, and many feared President Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t win reelection. Today, conventional wisdom holds that incumbent presidential candidates are more likely to win reelection, especially during wartime. Franklin Delano Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term during World War II, and Richard Nixon delayed Vietnam peace talks because he thought prolonging the Vietnam War would help his reelection chances in 1972 (and indeed, he won a second term). Yet in 1864, this wasn’t a comm

Tool an instrument of great value for educational use

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Weblogs have great potential as a tool in the field of teaching, since they can be adapted to any discipline, educational level and teaching methodology.  This article analyzes the characteristics of the blog format that favor its use in teaching-learning processes within a constructivist pedagogy and in accordance with the educational needs of the Information and Communication Society (SIC). In the new educational paradigm it is necessary to “learn to learn”, since training is not limited to a specific space and time, but rather requires maintaining a certain capacity for learning throughout life (long-life learning).  Constructivism is nourished by contributions on learning from different theories: from Piaget's cognitive studies and the relevance of social interaction in education defended by Vygotsky, to the currents of educational psychology that highlight the importance of meaningful learning (Ausubel et al., 1990). Compared to other educational models focused on th