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Lisa C. Hurst

Inside the School Silicon Valley Thinks Will Save Education | WIRED - 9 views

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    "AUTHOR: ISSIE LAPOWSKY. ISSIE LAPOWSKY DATE OF PUBLICATION: 05.04.15. 05.04.15 TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM. 7:00 AM INSIDE THE SCHOOL SILICON VALLEY THINKS WILL SAVE EDUCATION Click to Open Overlay Gallery Students in the youngest class at the Fort Mason AltSchool help their teacher, Jennifer Aguilar, compile a list of what they know and what they want to know about butterflies. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/WIRED SO YOU'RE A parent, thinking about sending your 7-year-old to this rogue startup of a school you heard about from your friend's neighbor's sister. It's prospective parent information day, and you make the trek to San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. You walk up to the second floor of the school, file into a glass-walled conference room overlooking a classroom, and take a seat alongside dozens of other parents who, like you, feel that public schools-with their endless bubble-filled tests, 38-kid classrooms, and antiquated approach to learning-just aren't cutting it. At the same time, you're thinking: this school is kind of weird. On one side of the glass is a cheery little scene, with two teachers leading two different middle school lessons on opposite ends of the room. But on the other side is something altogether unusual: an airy and open office with vaulted ceilings, sunlight streaming onto low-slung couches, and rows of hoodie-wearing employees typing away on their computers while munching on free snacks from the kitchen. And while you can't quite be sure, you think that might be a robot on wheels roaming about. Then there's the guy who's standing at the front of the conference room, the school's founder. Dressed in the San Francisco standard issue t-shirt and jeans, he's unlike any school administrator you've ever met. But the more he talks about how this school uses technology to enhance and individualize education, the more you start to like what he has to say. And so, if you are truly fed up with the school stat
anonymous

What are the Disadvantages of Online Schooling for Higher Education? - 18 views

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    "hat Are the Disadvantages of Online Schooling for Higher Education? Today, online schooling for higher education is prevalent across many fields. While there are several benefits to online schooling, such as flexibility and convenience, there are also real and perceived disadvantages. Explore some of the potential drawbacks of online learning. View 10 Popular Schools » Online Schooling In 2012, about a quarter of undergraduate college students were enrolled in distance education courses as part -- if not all -- of their studies, according to a 2014 report from the National Center for Education Statistics. That same data found that 29.8% of graduate students in this country are enrolled in some or all distance learning classes as well. A 2013 report from Babson Survey Research Group and Quahog Research Group, LLC, pointed out that approximately 86.5% of higher education institutions offer distance learning classes. Clearly, online schooling is commonplace. Disadvantages: Student Perspective Despite advantages, online schooling is not the right fit for every student. Taking online courses is generally believed to require more self-discipline than completing a degree on campus, a belief that is supported by SCHEV -- the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. Because online schooling options often allow students to complete much of the coursework at their own pace, students must be motivated to stay on schedule and manage their time accordingly. Other potential disadvantages from a student's viewpoint may include the following: Less Instructional Support Although instructors are available to students via e-mail, telephone, Web discussion boards and other online means, some students may see the lack of face-to-face interaction and one-on-one instruction as a challenge. A lack of communication or miscommunication between instructors and students may frustrate students who are struggling with course materials. That could be exacerbated by the casual nature
Alfredo Zavaleta

How Teens Do Research in the Digital World | Pew Research Center's Internet & American ... - 105 views

  • Overview Three-quarters of AP and NWP teachers say that the internet  and digital search tools have had a “mostly positive” impact on their students’ research habits, but 87% say these technologies are creating an “easily distracted generation with short attention spans” and 64% say today’s digital technologies “do more to distract students than to help them academically.”
  • Overall, the vast majority of these teachers say a top priority in today’s classrooms should be teaching students how to “judge the quality of online information.”
  • The internet and digital technologies are significantly impacting how students conduct research: 77% of these teachers say the overall impact is “mostly positive,” but they sound many cautionary notes
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  • Teachers and students alike report that for today’s students, “research” means “Googling.”  As a result, some teachers report that for their students “doing research” has shifted from a relatively slow process of intellectual curiosity and discovery to a fast-paced, short-term exercise aimed at locating just enough information to complete an assignment.
    • Kelly Sereno
       
      Yikes - a disturbing survey response!
  •   Second and third on the list of frequently used sources are online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia, and social media sites such as YouTube. 
  •  94% of the teachers surveyed say their students are “very likely” to use Google or other online search engines in a typical research assignment, placing it well ahead of all other sources that we asked about
  • e databases such as EBSCO, JSTOR, or Grolier (17%) A research librarian at their school or public library (16%)
  • In response to this trend, many teachers say they shape research assignments to address what they feel can be their students’ overdependence on search engines and online encyclopedias.  Nine in ten (90%) direct their students to specific online resources they feel are most appropriate for a particular assignment, and 83% develop research questions or assignments that require students to use a wider variety of sources, both online and offline.
  • Teachers give students’ research skills modest ratings Despite viewing the overall impact of today’s digital environment on students’ research habits as “mostly positive,” teachers rate the actual research skills of their students as “good” or “fair” in most cases.  Very few teachers rate their students “excellent” on any of the research skills included in the survey.  This is notable, given that the majority of the sample teaches Advanced Placement courses to the most academically advanced students.
    • Kelly Sereno
       
      These research skills relate to the common core literacy standards, and many ratings of students' skills in these areas fell into fair or poor categories.
  • Overwhelming majorities of these teachers also agree with the assertions that “today’s digital technologies are creating an easily distracted generation with short attention spans” (87%) and “today’s students are too ‘plugged in’ and need more time away from their digital technologies” (86%).  Two-thirds (64%) agree with the notion that “today’s digital technologies do more to distract students than to help them academically.”
    • Alfredo Zavaleta
       
      Students need to show more patience, take longer to decide, ponder the options.
    • Alfredo Zavaleta
       
      Procrastination not necessarily bad- see TED on procrastination
Randolph Hollingsworth

ASU - Service Learning USL210 - 5 views

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    COURSE OBJECTIVES: This is a graded internship that allows you to integrate your own coursework with a hands-on service learning experience. The central objective of this course is to provide students with community experiences and reflection opportunities that examine community needs, the importance of civic engagement, and social justice issues affecting ethnic minorities and marginalized populations in contemporary American society. Students dedicate 70 hours at a pre-approved site (including Title I K-12 schools, youth programs, health services, social services, environmental programs, government agencies, etc.) directly serving a population in need or supporting activities that contribute to the greater good of our community. A weekly seminar, course readings, discussions, and reflection assignments facilitate critical thinking and a deeper understanding of cultural diversity, citizenship, and how to contribute to positive social change in our community. The course is also designed to provide "real-world" experiences that exercise academic skills and knowledge applicable to each student‟s program of study and career exploration. STUDENT LEARNING OBJECTIVES: Student will be introduced to essential skills associated with their baccalaureate studies to actively serve the local community. While completing this in-depth study of cultural diversity, citizenship and social justice issues facing our community, students will gain an understanding of the value of Social Embeddedness and the importance of incorporating civic engagement into their collegiate careers, as they strive to become civically engaged students. Students will be introduced to inequalities, discrimination, and other community issues facing ethnic minorities and marginalized populations, as well as the correlation with greater societal issues. INTERNSHIP RESPONSIBILITIES:  Service hours - 70 hours of community outreach (spread throughout the semester in which you are enrolled in the course)
Randolph Hollingsworth

Ariz State Univ - Service Learning syllabus (USL410 Indep Placement) - 7 views

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    COURSE OBJECTIVES: This is a graded internship that allows you to integrate your own coursework with a hands-on service learning experience. The central objective of this course is to provide students with community experiences and reflection opportunities that examine community needs, the importance of civic engagement, and social justice issues affecting ethnic minorities and marginalized populations in contemporary American society. Students dedicate 70 hours at a pre-approved site (including Title I K-12 schools, youth programs, health services, social services, environmental programs, government agencies, etc.) directly serving a population in need or supporting activities that contribute to the greater good of our community. A weekly seminar, course readings, discussions, and reflection assignments facilitate critical thinking and a deeper understanding of cultural diversity, citizenship, and how to contribute to positive social change in our community. The course is also designed to provide "real-world" experiences that exercise academic skills and knowledge applicable to each student‟s program of study and career exploration. STUDENT LEARNING OBJECTIVES: Student will be introduced to essential skills associated with their baccalaureate studies to actively serve the local community. While completing this in-depth study of cultural diversity, citizenship and social justice issues facing our community, students will gain an understanding of the value of Social Embeddedness and the importance of incorporating civic engagement into their collegiate careers, as they strive to become civically engaged students. Students will be introduced to inequalities, discrimination, and other community issues facing ethnic minorities and marginalized populations, as well as the correlation with greater societal issues. INTERNSHIP RESPONSIBILITIES:  Service hours - 70 hours of community outreach (spread throughout the semester in which you are enrolled in the course)
Florence Dujardin

Effects of electronic outlining on students' argumentative writing performance - de Sme... - 1 views

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    This study examined the effect of electronic outlining on the quality of students' writing products and how outlining affects perceived mental effort during the writing task. Additionally, it was studied how students appropriate and appreciate an outline tool and whether they need explicit instruction in order to engage in planning. To answer these questions, the writing products and self-report data from 34 tenth-grade students of a Dutch pre-university school were analysed. Students wrote two similar argumentative texts with or without an outline tool. Results show that electronic outlining improves the quality of students' argumentative texts and decreases mental effort. Answers to a retrospective questionnaire showed that a short instruction on the outline tool was sufficient for students to understand its working and that most students experienced the tool as beneficial. Finally, results indicate that without specific instruction on text planning, students hardly devote any time to this important aspect of writing.
Matt Renwick

Educational Leadership:Faces of Poverty:Boosting Achievement by Pursuing Diversity - 19 views

    • Matt Renwick
       
      This is a critical point. Allowing middle class families to pick and choose where there kids should go without valid reasons (i.e. work) can hurt high poverty schools.
    • Matt Renwick
       
      Have we?
  • Residential poverty tends to be concentrated, and successful school integration requires either a district with enough socioeconomic diversity within its boundaries or a group of neighboring districts which, when combined, have enough diversity to facilitate an interdistrict integration plan.
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  • A weighted lottery is the simplest way for schools to ensure that they enroll a diverse student body while still relying on choice-based enrollment.
    • Matt Renwick
       
      A possible solution?
  • ndividual success stories and a review of research suggest that it is possible, by offering all students a single challenging curriculum, to reduce the achievement gap without harming the highest achievers (Burris, Wiley, Welner, & Murphy, 2008; Rui, 2009).
  • In the middle grades, students at City Neighbors start their day with half an hour of highly specialized, small-group instruction called intensive. Intensive provides an opportunity for extra support or enrichment in different subjects, allowing teachers to meet different students' needs while still teaching most of the academic time in mixed-ability classrooms.
    • Matt Renwick
       
      Sounds like an intervention block, something many buildings have or are looking at.
  • small but growing number of schools are attempting to boost the achievement of low-income students by shifting enrollment to place more low-income students in mixed-income schools. Socioeconomic integration is an effective way to tap into the academic benefits of having high-achieving peers, an engaged community of parents, and high-quality teachers.
  • A 2010 meta-analysis found that students of all socioeconomic statuses, races, ethnicities, and grade levels were likely to have higher mathematics performance if they attended socioeconomically and racially integrated schools (Mickelson & Bottia, 2010).
  • Research supporting socioeconomic integration goes back to the famous Coleman Report, which found that the strongest school-related predictor of student achievement was the socioeconomic composition of the student body (Coleman et al., 1966).
  • nd results of the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress in mathematics show steady increases in low-income 4th graders' average scores as the percentage of poor students in their school decreases (U.S. Department of Education, 2011).
  • a number of studies have found that the relationship between student outcomes and the socioeconomic composition of schools is strong even after controlling for some of these factors, using more nuanced measures of socioeconomic status, or comparing outcomes for students randomly assigned to schools (Reid, 2012; Schwartz, 2012).
  • Rumberger and Palardy (2005) found that the socioeconomic composition of the school was as strong a predictor of student outcomes as students' own socioeconomic status.
  • Socioeconomic integration is a win-win situation: Low-income students' performance rises; all students receive the cognitive benefits of a diverse learning environment (Antonio et al., 2004; Phillips, Rodosky, Muñoz, & Larsen, 2009); and middle-class students' performance seems to be unaffected up to a certain level of integration.
  • A recent meta-analysis found "growing but still inconclusive evidence" that the achievement of more advantaged students was not harmed by desegregation policies (Harris, 2008, p. 563).
  • he findings suggested that, more than a precise threshold, what mattered in these schools was maintaining a critical mass of middle-class families, which promoted a culture of high expectations, safety, and community support.
  • istricts have chosen to let school boundaries reflect or even amplify residential segregation.
Jennifer Diaz

13 Strategies to Improve Student Classroom Discussions - 149 views

  • These 13-teacher and expert-tested strategies will strengthen your students' ability to find and use evidence from any text
  • Texts that inspire questions encourage students to return to the text and find support for their answers
  • starting with one overarching focus question
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  • Require students to have evidence ready at the start of the discussion
  • "prove it"
  • evidence will actually open up a text to different interpretations
  • The challenge is getting students to expand and explain. To get students to explain why they choose a piece of evidence, provide them with a structure that moves from evidence to interpretation. Williams' students use a graphic organizer with three columns: They write their answer in the first column, note textual evidence in the second, and explain their evidence in the third.
    • Jennifer Diaz
       
      I want to do this!
  • Use sentence starters strategically
  • In the text ... the author mentions ...
  • the author uses this evidence to ... this lets us know that ...
  • Give students enough time to flip through and find just the right piece of evidence. If other students are getting antsy, choose one of your always-ready students to share, then loop back to the student who needed time with the text
    • Jennifer Diaz
       
      Good idea to keep the pace moving, while providing enough time to find better evidence.
    • deniseahlquist
       
      And if you encourage a collaborative atmosphere, having students ALL look for evidence related to each person's idea will mean they are all engaged in searching whenever anyone makes a claim. Either choose someone who has found it, or have them mark the page and keep searching for more evidence. Then have students ALL GO to the passage cited, so they can closely follow and respond with additional or conflicting evidence.
  • "Just because there's more than one right answer," says Riley, "doesn't mean there's no wrong answer."
    • deniseahlquist
       
      Part of what students do when they all look for evidence for each idea is to learn to weigh evidence for competing ideas and sift out "weaker" or unsupported answers from "stronger" claims. Brainstorming an idea that later doesn't pan out should not e seen as bad or wrong, but more accurately as the way idea-generating and sifting actually happens in many situations.
  • According to page
  • create an anchor chart
    • Jennifer Diaz
       
      Create and authentic anchor chart of student/teacher generated starters and prompts.
  • Listen for how students personalize the discussion, and encourage them to develop their own voice.
  • go back to the text
  • They answer the focus question a second time, explain whether or not they changed their answers, and reflect on how the evidence brought up during discussion impacted their thinking.
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    Great ideas for 6th grade response to literature discussion and writing.
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    I haven't taught sixth grade for 3 1/2 years now, but if I ever go back to ms, I'd incorporate this into my weekly plans. One way I get my second graders to grow their thinking is by having them respond to one another using the following prompts:  I agree with the part about…  Going back to what you said about…  One thing I noticed…  One thing I pictured…  It reminded me of…  I am not sure what you are saying. Could you say it in another way?  I agree with what you are saying because…  What you just said matches what is in my mind because…  I hear what you are saying, but I see it differently because…  If what you said is true, is it not also true that…  That is true, but… Or - That is true, and…  Could you say more?  Could you give me an example?  I would like to add on to what _________ said.  I have an example of what you just said.  I wonder why…  I was surprised to see…  Another thing that goes with that is…  So are you saying…
rbatie19

Chronic Absenteeism Can Devastate K-12 Learning (Opinion) - 7 views

  • in a study of California students for Attendance Works, the organization that Hedy Chang oversees, only 17 percent of the students who were chronically absent in both kindergarten and 1st grade were reading proficiently by 3rd grade, compared with 64 percent of those with good attendance in the early years. Weak reading skills in the 3rd grade translate into academic trouble ahead: Students who aren’t reading well by that point are four times more likely to drop out of high school, according to a 2012 study released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
  • Chronic absence in middle school is another red flag that a student will drop out of high school. By high school, attendance is a better dropout indicator than test scores.
  • A recent report, “Absences Add Up,” also from Attendance Works, documents what many know from common sense: At every age, in every demographic, and in every state and city tested, students with poor attendance scored significantly lower on standardized tests. In our schools, this translates into weaker reading skills, failing grades, and higher dropout rates. Rather than looking at attendance as an administrative chore, schools can use the same data as a warning sign to change the trajectory.
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  • The results were significant. Students with mentors gained nine school days—almost two weeks—during the year. They were more likely to remain in school and maintain their grade point averages than similar students without mentors. The program worked at every K-12 level: elementary, middle, and high school, with the greatest impact on students struggling with poverty and homelessness.
  • The mentors had several simple but straightforward responsibilities. They greeted the students every day to let them know they were glad to see them at school. They called home if students were sick to find out what was happening. They connected the students and their families to resources to help address attendance barriers. Mentors participated in school-based teams that analyzed data and shared insights about students. And they also supported schoolwide activities, including assemblies, incentives, and contests, to encourage better attendance for all students.
  • Elementary schools set up attendance teams to identify and monitor the students with the worst attendance. Part-time social workers, hired with philanthropic and state dollars, connected with families. Principals and teachers promoted attendance at back-to-school nights, at parent-teacher conferences, and through regular calls home. This work led to a significant drop in absenteeism in all elementary grades, particularly in kindergarten. The percentage of chronically absent kindergartners fell from 30 percent in the 2011-12 school year to 13 percent in 2013-14. And reading scores began to climb.
Jim Aird

How to Improve Public Online Education: Report Offers a Model - Government - The Chroni... - 18 views

  • var createCookie = function (name,value,days) { if (days) { var date = new Date(); date.setTime(date.getTime()+(days*24*60*60*1000)); var expires = "; expires="+date.toGMTString(); } else var expires = ""; document.cookie = name+"="+value+expires+"; path=/"; } var readCookie = function (name) { var nameEQ = name + "="; var ca = document.cookie.split(';'); for(var i=0;i < ca.length;i++) { var c = ca[i]; while (c.charAt(0)==' ') c = c.substring(1,c.length); if (c.indexOf(nameEQ) == 0) return c.substring(nameEQ.length,c.length); } return null; } var eraseCookie = function (name) { createCookie(name,"",-1); } = Premium Content Welcome, James | Log Out | My Account | Subscribe Now Tuesday, April 23, 2013Subscribe Today Home News Opinion &amp; Ideas Facts &amp; Figures Blogs Jobs Advice Forums Events Store Faculty Administration Technology Community Colleges Global Special Reports People Current Issue Archives Government HomeNewsAdministrationGovernment function check() { if (document.getElementById("searchInput").value == '' ) { alert('Please enter search terms'); return false; } else return true; } $().ready(function() { if($('.comment_count') && $('div.comment').size() > 0) { $('.comment_count').html('(' + $('div.comment').size() +')') } $('#email-popup').jqm({onShow:chronShow, onHide:chronHide, trigger: 'a.show-email', modal: 'true'}); $('#share-popup').jqm({onShow:chronShow, onHide:chronHide, trigger: 'a.show-share', modal: 'true'}); }); E-mail function openAccordion() { $('#dropSection > h3').addClass("open"); $(".dropB").css('display', 'block'); } function printPage() { window.print(); } $(document).ready(function() { $('.print-btn').click(function(){ printPage(); }); }); Print Comments (3) Share April 22, 2013 How to Improve Public Online Education: Report Offers a Model By Charles Huckabee Public colleges and universities, which educate the bulk of all American college students, have been slower than their counterparts in the for-profit sector to embrace the potential of online learning to offer pathways to degrees. A new report from the New America Foundation suggests a series of policies that states and public higher-education systems could adopt to do some catching up. The report, "State U Online," by Rachel Fishman, a policy analyst with the foundation, analyzes where public online-education efforts stand now and finds that access to high-quality, low-cost online courses varies widely from state to state. Those efforts fall along a continuum of organizational levels, says the report. At the low end of the spectrum, course availability, pricing, transferability of credit, and other issues are all determined at the institutional level, by colleges, departments, or individual professors, resulting in a patchwork collection of online courses that's difficult for stud
  • patchwork collection of online courses that's difficult for students to navigate.
  • they can improve their online-education efforts to help students find streamlined, affordable pathways to a degree.
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  • "Taken together, these steps result in something that looks less like an unorganized collection of Internet-based classes, and more like a true public university."
  • I am always miffed at the people within Higher Ed who recognize that nothing about pedagogy has changed in 50 years except computers and PowerPoint but they still rationalize that nothing needs changed or fixed.
Kathleen N

the.Planet | the.News | YOU.edit |You.Report - 0 views

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    Site for MS-HS students ;lesson plans for teachers YOU.edit will go online in the spring of 2009. Students will be able to create their own interactive videos through the YOU.edit online editing tool that will be available in early 2009. This tool will allow students to create online reports drawn from the digital files that comprise a completed the.News segment. These component parts include video, music, graphics, interviews, and narration. YOU.edit will go online in the spring of 2009. Students will be able to create their own interactive videos through the YOU.edit online editing tool that will be available in early 2009. This tool will allow students to create online reports drawn from the digital files that comprise a completed the.News segment. These component parts include video, music, graphics, interviews, and narration.
Marc Hamlin

Reintroducing students to Research - 144 views

  • First, we think research, broadly defined, is a valuable part of an undergraduate education. Even at a rudimentary level, engaging in research implicates students in the creation of knowledge. They need to understand that knowledge isn’t an inert substance they passively receive, but is continually created, debated, and reformulated—and they have a role to play in that process.
  • we recognize that research is situated in disciplinary frameworks and needs to be addressed in terms of distinct research traditions.
  • research is a complex and recursive process involving not just finding information but framing and refining a question, perhaps gathering primary data through field or lab work, choosing and evaluating appropriate evidence, negotiating different viewpoints, and composing some kind of response, all activities that are not linear but intertwined.
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  • learning to conduct inquiry is itself complex and recursive. These skills need to be developed throughout a research project and throughout a student’s education.
  • the hybrid nature of libraries today requires students to master both traditional and emerging information formats, but the skills that students need to conduct effective inquiry—for example, those mentioned in your mission statement of reading critically and reasoning analytically—are the same whether the materials they use are in print or electronic.
  • Too often, traditional research paper assignments defeat their own purpose by implying that research is not discovery, but rather a report on what someone else has already discovered. More than once I’ve had to talk students out of abandoning a paper topic because, to their dismay, they find out it’s original. If they can’t find a source that says for them exactly what they want to say—better yet, five sources—they think they’ll get in trouble.
  • In reality, students doing researched writing typically spend a huge percentage of their time mapping out the research area before they can focus their research question. This is perfectly legitimate, though they often feel they’re spinning wheels. They have to do a good bit of reading before they really know what they’re looking for.
  • she has students seek out both primary and secondary sources, make choices among them, and develop some conclusions in presentations that are far from standard literary criticism. One lab focuses on collecting and seeking relationships among assigned literary texts and other primary sources from the second half of the twentieth century to illuminate American society in that time period.
  • For this lab, groups of students must find ten primary sources that relate in some way to literary texts under discussion and then—here’s the unusual bit—write three new verses of “America the Beautiful” that use the primary sources to illuminate a vision of American society. Instead of amber waves of grain and alabaster cities, they select images that reformulate the form of the song to represent another vision of the country. At the end of the course, her final essay assignment calls upon all of the work the previous labs have done, asking students to apply the skills they’ve practiced through the semester. While students in this course don’t do a single, big research project, they practice skills that will prepare them to do more sophisticated work later.
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    What are our assumptions about how students get research done in the humanities? How do those assumptions affect our instruction, and what really is our students' approach to research?
Florence Dujardin

Embedding academic writing instruction into subject teaching: A case study - 0 views

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    The benefits of embedding the teaching of writing into the curriculum have been advocated by educators and researchers. However, there is currently little evidence of embedded writing instruction in the UK's higher education context. In this article, we present a case study in which we report the design, implementation and evaluation of an academic writing intervention with first-year undergraduate students in an applied linguistics programme. Our objectives were to try a combination of embedded instructional methods and provide an example that can be followed by lecturers across disciplines and institutions. Through the integration of in-class and online writing tasks and assessment feedback in a first-term module, we supported students' writing development throughout the first term. We evaluated the effects of the intervention through the analysis of notes on classroom interaction, a student questionnaire and interviews, and a text analysis of students' writing and the feedback comments over time. The evaluation findings provide insights into the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach. The embedded writing instruction was perceived as useful by both students and teachers. The assessment feedback, whilst being the most work-intensive method for the teachers, was valued most by the students and led to substantial improvements in the writing of some. These findings suggest that embedded writing instruction could be usefully applied in other higher education contexts.
Roland Gesthuizen

School Report - BBC News School Report explained - 7 views

  • In March, schools take part in an annual News Day, creating video, audio and text-based news reports, and publishing them on a school website, to which the BBC aims to link. The next News Day is Thursday 21 March 2013. Listen
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    "BBC News School Report gives 11-16 year-old students in the UK the chance to make their own news reports for a real audience. Using lesson plans and materials from this website, and with support from BBC staff and partners, teachers help students develop their journalistic skills to become School Reporters."
Randolph Hollingsworth

National Center for Education Statistics, The Nation's Report Card: Writing 2011 - 2 views

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    Asa Spencer of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute writes in the Education Gadfly Weekly: "Traditionalists cringe, tech buffs rejoice: This latest NAEP writing assessment for grades eight and twelve marks the first computer-based appraisal (by the "nation's report card") of student proficiency in this subject. It evaluates students' writing skills (what NAEP calls both academic and workplace writing) based on three criteria: idea development, organization, and language facility and conventions. Results were predictably bad: Just twenty-four percent of eighth graders and 27 percent of twelfth graders scored proficient or above. Boys performed particularly poorly; half as many eighth-grade males reached proficiency as their female counterparts. The use of computers adds a level of complexity to these analyses: The software allows those being tested to use a thesaurus (which 29 percent of eighth graders exploited), text-to-speech software (71 percent of eighth graders used), spell check (three-quarters of twelfth graders), and kindred functions. It is unclear whether use of these crutches affected a student's "language facility" scores, though it sure seems likely. While this new mechanism for assessing kids' writing prowess makes it impossible to track trend data, one can make (disheartening) comparisons across subjects. About a third of eighth graders hit the NAEP proficiency benchmark in the latest science, math, and reading assessments, compared to a quarter for writing. So where to go from here? The report also notes that twelfth-grade students who write four to five pages a week score ten points higher than those who write just one page a week. Encouraging students to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) is a start."
paul lowe

A report says universities' use of virtual technologies is 'patchy' | Education | The G... - 1 views

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    The "Google generation" of today's students has grown up in a digital world. Most are completely au fait with the microblogging site Twitter; they organise their social lives through Facebook and MySpace; 75% of students have a profile on at least one social networking site. And they spend up to four hours a day online. Modern students are happy to share and participate but are prone to impatience - being used to quick answers - and are casual about evaluating information and attributing it, and also about legal and copyright issues. With almost weekly developments in technology and research added to increasingly web-savvy students' expectations, how are British universities keeping up? Pretty well, according to Sir David Melville, chair of Lifelong Learning UK and author of a new report into how students' use of new technologies will affect higher education.
Steve Ransom

The Impact of Digital Tools on Student Writing and How Writing is Taught in Schools | P... - 82 views

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    Asked to assess their students' performance on nine specific writing skills, teachers tended to rate their students "good" or "fair" as opposed to "excellent" or "very good." Students received the best ratings on their ability to "effectively organize and structure writing assignments" and their ability to "understand and consider multiple viewpoints on a particular topic or issue." Teachers gave students the lowest ratings when it comes to "navigating issues of fair use and copyright in composition" and "reading and digesting long or complicated texts."
D. S. Koelling

Helping First-Year Students Help Themselves - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Educ... - 1 views

  • According to a yearly national survey of more than 200,000 first-year students conducted by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles, college freshmen are increasingly "overwhelmed," rating their emotional health at the lowest levels in the 25 years the question has been asked. Such is the latest problem dropped at the offices of higher-education administrators and professors nationwide: Young adults raised with a single-minded focus on gaining admission to college now need help translating that focus into ways to thrive on campus and beyond.
  • Many young adults weren't taught the basic life skills and coping mechanisms for challenging times.
  • The consequences for students who lack those skills have become increasingly clear both on campus and after graduation. At Pitt, where I teach, and at other institutions, student-life administrators have noticed a marked decrease in resiliency, particularly among first-year students. That leads to an increase in everything from roommate disagreements to emotional imbalance and crisis. After graduation, employers complain that a lack of coping mechanisms makes for less proficient workers: According to a 2006 report by the Conference Board, a business-research group, three-quarters of surveyed employers said incoming new graduates were deficient in "soft" skills like communication and decision making.
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  • Parents and high-school educators certainly have a role to play, but college administrators and professors cannot abdicate their role as an influential socialization force to guide young adults toward better self-management.
  • The way to combat the decline in emotional health among first-year students is to offer them opportunities to build such self-efficacy from the start.
  • Teaching interpersonal skills of self-presentation is also essential, as it makes students' interactions with roommates, professors, and professional colleagues flow more smoothly. By following suggestions popularized by Dale Carnegie during the Great Depression—to think in terms of the interests of others, smile, and express honest and sincere appreciation—my Generation WTF students report being happily stunned by more-successful interviews, better relationships with family members, and more-meaningful interactions with friends.
  • While much of my advice seems revolutionary to them, adults from previous generations know that I'm simply teaching a return to core values of self-control, honesty, thrift, and perseverance­—the basic skills that will allow those in "emerging adulthood" to get on with life.
trisha_poole

Education Week: Effective Use of Digital Tools Seen Lacking in Most Tech.-Rich Schools - 100 views

  • Those factors include integrating technology into intervention classes; setting aside time for professional learning and collaboration for teachers; allowing students to use technology to collaborate; integrating technology into core curricula at least weekly; administering online formative assessments at least weekly; lowering the student-to-computer ratio as much as possible; using virtual field trips at least monthly; encouraging students to use search engines daily; and providing training for principals on how to encourage best practices for technology implementation. Only about 1 percent of the 1,000 schools surveyed by Project RED followed all those steps, and those that did “saw dramatic increases in student achievement and had revenue-positive experiences,” Ms. Wilson said.
    • Adam Truitt
       
      Data drives decisions....or at least should
  • cut their photocopying and printing budgets in half.
    • London Jenks
       
      The "paperless classroom" or the "not so much paper as before" classroom
    • trisha_poole
       
      This is similar to what is happening in Australia, particularly NSW, I think.
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  • requires leadership,professional development, collaboration, and new forms of pedagogy and assessment
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    Most schools that have integrated laptop computers and other digital devices into learning are not following the paths necessary to maximize the use of technology in ways that will raise student achievement and help save money, a report concludes."We all know that technology does things to improve our lives, but very few schools are implementing properly," said Leslie Wilson, a co-author of the study, "The Technology Factor: Nine Keys to Student Achievement and Cost-Effectiveness," released last month. She is the chief executive officer of the Mason, Mich.-based One-to-One Institute, which advocates putting mobile-computing devices into the hands of all students.
Javier E

The Default Major - Skating Through B-School - NYTimes.com - 41 views

  • Dr. Mason, who teaches economics at the University of North Florida, believes his students are just as intelligent as they’ve always been. But many of them don’t read their textbooks, or do much of anything else that their parents would have called studying. “We used to complain that K-12 schools didn’t hold students to high standards,” he says with a sigh. “And here we are doing the same thing ourselves.”
  • all evidence suggests that student disengagement is at its worst in Dr. Mason’s domain: undergraduate business education.
  • “Business education has come to be defined in the minds of students as a place for developing elite social networks and getting access to corporate recruiters,”
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  • It’s an attitude that Dr. Khurana first saw in M.B.A. programs but has migrated, he says, to the undergraduate level.
  • Second, in management and marketing, no strong consensus has emerged about what students ought to learn or how they ought to learn it.
  • Gains on the C.L.A. closely parallel the amount of time students reported spending on homework. Another explanation is the heavy prevalence of group assignments in business courses: the more time students spent studying in groups, the weaker their gains in the kinds of skills the C.L.A. measures.
  • The pedagogical theory is that managers need to function in groups, so a management education without such experiences would be like medical training without a residency. While some group projects are genuinely challenging, the consensus among students and professors is that they are one of the elements of business that make it easy to skate through college.
  • “We’ve got students who don’t read, and grow up not reading,” he says. “There are too many other things competing for their time. The frequency and quantity of drinking keeps getting higher. We have issues with depression. Getting students alert and motivated — even getting them to class, to be honest with you — it’s a challenge.”
  • “A lot of classes I’ve been exposed to, you just go to class and they do the PowerPoint from the book,” he says. “It just seems kind of pointless to go when (a) you’re probably not going to be paying much attention anyway and (b) it would probably be worth more of your time just to sit with your book and read it.”
  • “It seems like now, every take-home test you get, you can just go and Google. If the question is from a test bank, you can just type the text in, and somebody out there will have it and you can just use that.”
  • This is not senioritis, he says: this is the way all four years have been. In a typical day, “I just play sports, maybe go to the gym. Eat. Probably drink a little bit. Just kind of goof around all day.” He says his grade-point average is 3.3.
  • concrete business skills tend to expire in five years or so as technology and organizations change.
  • History and philosophy, on the other hand, provide the kind of contextual knowledge and reasoning skills that are indispensable for business students.
  • when they hand in papers, they’re marked up twice: once for content by a professor with specialized expertise, and once for writing quality by a business-communication professor.
  • a national survey of 259 business professors who had been teaching for at least 10 years. On average, respondents said they had reduced the math and analytic-thinking requirements in their courses. In exchange, they had increased the number of requirements related to computer skills and group presentations.
  • what about employers? What do they want? According to national surveys, they want to hire 22-year-olds who can write coherently, think creatively and analyze quantitative data, and they’re perfectly happy to hire English or biology majors. Most Ivy League universities and elite liberal arts colleges, in fact, don’t even offer undergraduate business majors.
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