Extreme Curriculum Makeover

At a time where the tipping point for education seems to be a perpetually delayed expectation, despite widespread consensus and shared awareness to reform school practice for a completely new paradigm, change can actually be initiated in the real life school setting, by means of strategic curriculum interventions that target exposing students directly to the principles of the school of the future. Extreme Curriculum Makeover: A Hands-On Guide for a Learner-Centered Pedagogy explores how to develop a learner-centered pedagogy through specific strategies that can be implemented in any classroom, at any grade level, and that can transform the traditional learning environment into one where the students themselves acquire the tools, the skills, and, more importantly, the motivation to become lifelong learners.

"How to retire in your 20s and 30s (without winning the lottery). This book provides a robust strategy that makes it possible to stop working for money in less than a decade."--Page 4 of cover.

This cutting edge book considers how advances in technologies and new media have transformed our perception of education, and focuses on the impact of the privatisation of digital tools as a mean of knowledge production. Arguing that education needs to adapt to the modern learner, the book’s unique approach is based on a disassociation with the deeply ingrained attitude with which people have traditionally viewed education – learning the existing symbolic systems of certain disciplines and then expressing themselves strictly within the operational modes of these systems. The ways of knowledge production – exploring, recording, representing, making meaning of and sharing human experiences – have been fundamentally transformed through the infusion of digital technologies into all aspects of human activity, allowing learners to engage with their immediate natural, social and cultural environments by capitalising on their individual abilities and interests. This book proposes a new approach to teaching and learning termed ‘cinematic bricolage’, which involves generating knowledge from heterogeneous resources in a ‘do-it-yourself’ manner while making meaning through multimodal representations. It shows how cinematic bricolage reconnects ways of knowing with ways of being, empowering the individual with a sense of personal identity and responsibility, helping to shape more aware social citizens.

This indispensable guide combines proven curriculum design with teaching methods that encourage students to learn concepts as well as content and skills for deep understanding across all subject areas.

An analysis of Hillary Clinton's efforts to adapt her public image to render her a desirable presidential candidate describes how perceptions about her have changed, in a profile that considers her eligibility and potential for the presidency.

In 2004, roughly 25 makeover-themed reality shows aired on U.S. television. By 2009, there were more than 250, from What Not to Wear and The Biggest Loser to Dog Whisperer and Pimp My Ride. In Makeover TV, Brenda R. Weber argues that whether depicting transformations of bodies, trucks, finances, relationships, kids, or homes, makeover shows posit a self achievable only in the transition from the “Before-body”—the overweight figure, the decrepit jalopy, the cluttered home—to the “After-body,” one filled with confidence, coded with celebrity, and imbued with a renewed faith in the powers of meritocracy. The rationales and tactics invoked to achieve the After-body vary widely, from the patriotic to the market-based, and from talk therapy to feminist empowerment. The genre is unified by its contradictions: to uncover your “true self,” you must be reinvented; to be empowered, you must surrender to experts; to be special, you must look and act like everyone else. Based on her analysis of more than 2,500 hours of makeover TV, Weber argues that the much-desired After-body speaks to and makes legible broader cultural narratives about selfhood, citizenship, celebrity, and Americanness. Although makeovers are directed at both male and female viewers, their gendered logic requires that feminized subjects submit to the controlling expertise wielded by authorities. The genre does not tolerate ambiguity. Conventional (middle-class, white, ethnically anonymous, heterosexual) femininity is the goal of makeovers for women. When subjects are male, makeovers often compensate for perceived challenges to masculine independence by offering men narrative options for resistance or control. Foregoing a binary model of power and subjugation, Weber provides an account of makeover television that is as appreciative as it is critical. She reveals the makeover show as a rich and complicated text that expresses cultural desires and fears through narratives of selfhood.

Transform boys into Godly men who will radically change the world.

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