Group items tagged

relevant to uptake (adoption and adaptation) of tools/processes learned in workshops and to building a constituency

This interactive site provides a wealth of information on the research that is being conducted on young people and their civic engagement.

This article looks at using Wiki's for educational purposes, and the issues and benefits surrounding this.

Great article related to Attention Restoration Theory (ART) which was part of my study in 692. Easy to read, and relevant for cognitive psychology students. Check out the Children & Nature Network for more research and info on the importance of connecting with and learning through nature: http://www.childrenandnature.org

While this article is a bit dated, the concept of virtual volunteering intrigued me. I am interested in exploring this notion a bit more to determine if some of the same benefits can be achieved. It is a nice link between my work in this class and what I focused on in the 692 course.

This journal article looks at using Wikis in classrooms, and offers suggestions with regard to how to go about getting started.

This article discusses affective conflict vs cognitive conflict. Conflict is everywhere we go and these tools can really provide insight on how to handle the situation.

This video focuses on 53 useful things you can do with Wikis in your teaching. Although this focuses on higher education rather than special education, there is still a lot of ideas I could take from this and relate it to my own project.

This article is an example of action research in schools serving students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Several schools were involved in this research which focused on student, parent, and teacher involvement to improve student's engagement and participation during the school day.

Action research in a school. This article discusses how a school librarian was required to have students for one thirty minute class period. She talks about how she didn't want it to be a waste of time so she came up with a plan to make sure the time spent in the library would be well spent. She got feedback from the students to get ideas on what they wanted to get from this experience.

I think this is a good example of action research. The article discusses the relationship between stress at work and how it can have an effect on employees' health. It also gives ideas on ways to decrease stress at work thus improving the health of employees.

This is as very interesting article. The action research process is used along side quantitative data collection procedures to determine effects and solutions to employee stress and workplace changes. The article is extensive and I confess I did skip over the details of the subjects involved in order to see the author's results. The inclusion of employee input to determine matters that disturb them, which can be underestimated and overlooked, such as the simple need to be validated in the work they do, or the desire to have more input into decisions, is how the researchers were able to create interventions for change, by learning about the actual areas of stress.

This action research project's purpose was to decrease off-task behavior in elementary and high school students using Cooperative Learning Strategies. This method of keeping students focused was interesting to me because I typically think of students' off-task behavior as being distracted or chatting with peers, but this method actually promotes working with peers in groups. It teaches collaboration along with social skills in the process.

This is the journal/report of a computer science teacher at a private school who redesigned his classes, moving away from a grades- and information-based model toward an adaptive learning, self-motivating, community-of-scholars, discovery approach. He designed it as an ongoing action-research project for his graduate degree. The narrative is easy to follow and good things happen.

This article is the start to ongoing research in Lexington Public Schools. It was brought to the superintendents attention that there is an over representation of METCO students in the special-ed program, meaning there is a high number of METCO students requiring special help in one or more subjects. The study uses data from standardized testing, surveys, and past research. The article proposes quite a few different recommendations of where the research should go from here.

Great Post, Nicole: I recently petitioned to be able to take a different course for my multi-cultural component, that actually addresses legal and procedural considerations for such misrepresentations. This article was very timely for me personally, as I would like to be able to foster positive changes so that minority students are not misplaced in special educational programs, which both does not serve their individual needs appropriately and it also detracts from the resources available to true "special needs" learning disabled students. More programs need to be implemented such as those recommended in this article that provide extensive tutoring, mentoring, summer academic support opportunities that are separate from "special education" programs. Mary Ann Fogarty Pessa