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such students learn “how to perform theory without polysyllabic words” and how to feel as well as to articulate.

Given the evolution of new media, how can educators determine what to use, when, and why? Hence, our guiding question is, how should educators assess the effectiveness of new media using performance-based measures—not relying only on the often-used survey of student satisfaction?

One strategy we employ applies equally to any new approach in teaching, whether it employs “new media” or not. That strategy is to apply some of the best current knowledge from cognitive and learning sciences to assess proposed teaching innovation.

What is the educational need, problem, or gap for which use of new media might potentially enhance learning?

The Guidelines are not based on any particular theory, pedagogical method, or educational curriculum. They neither describe how an individual learns a language nor prescribe how an individual should learn a language, and they should not be used for such purposes. They are an instrument for the evaluation of functional language abilityfunctional language abilityA language user's ability to accomplish real world communicative tasks such as handling a simple social transaction or resolving a situation with a complication..

what individuals can do with language in terms of speaking, writing, listening, and reading in real-world situations in a spontaneous and non-rehearsed context.

These Guidelines present the levels of proficiency as ranges, and describe what an individual can and cannot do with language at each level, regardless of where, when, or how the language was acquired.

Cultural anthropology professor Michael Wesch came up with “World Sim” to push students to stop asking, “What’s going to be on the test?” and to contemplate bigger questions: Why are some people poor and some rich? How does the world work?

The goal, he says, is to create an environment where students can expand their capacity for empathizing with and loving those who are different from them.

Professor Wesch sets up the simulation by giving each culture a certain amount of power in the beginning – symbolized by playing cards. Then, based on a complex set of rules the class has devised together, students go through each round of the game – striking alliances, trading cards, and sometimes starting “wars” over resources.

I even go so far as sending my students the link to my rating. That way they can do it and I'm making it easy for them to do. That's when the site becomes useful, because in the aggregate you can look at how that professor performed.

She sees negative comments as opportunities to improve her teaching. Most students post to the site unprompted by their teachers, and a lot of them go there to talk smack.

My mother could be rating me. My worst enemy could be rating me. I could be rating myself. My colleague with a grudge against me could be rating me. And that called into question the whole legitimacy of the site.

ongoing series of conversations and dialogs with hundreds of technology professionals, campus technologists, faculty leaders from colleges and universities, and representatives of leading corporations from more than two dozen countries. In each of the past six years, these conversations have resulted in the publication each January of a report focused on emerging technologies relevant to higher education.

When the cycle starts, little is known, or even can be known, about the appropriateness or efficacy of many of the emerging technologies for these purposes, as the Horizon Project expressly focuses on technologies not currently in widespread use in academe. In a typical year, 75 or more of these technologies may be identified for further investigation; for the 2010 report, more than 110 were considered

By engaging a wide community of interested parties, and diligently searching the Internet and other sources, enough information is gathered early in the process to allow the members of the Advisory Board to form an understanding of how each of the discovered technologies might be in use in settings outside of academe, to develop a sense of the potential the technology may have for higher education settings, and to envision applications of the technology for teaching, learning, and creative inquiry. The findings are discussed in a variety of settings — with faculty, industry experts, campus technologists, and of course, the Horizon Advisory Board. Of particular interest to the Advisory Board every year is finding educational applications for these technologies that may not be intuitive or obvious.