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But here's the irony. "Mary is more likely to convince John than professor Mazur in front of the class," Mazur says. "She's only recently learned it and still has some feeling for the conceptual difficulties that she has whereas professor Mazur learned [the idea] such a long time ago that he can no longer understand why somebody has difficulty grasping it." That's the irony of becoming an expert in your field, Mazur says. "It becomes not easier to teach, it becomes harder to teach because you're unaware of the conceptual difficulties of a beginning learner."

To make sure his students are prepared, Mazur has set up a web-based monitoring system where everyone has to submit answers to questions about the reading prior to coming to class. The last question asks students to tell Mazur what confused them. He uses their answers to prepare a set of multiple-choice questions he uses during class.

Mazur begins class by giving a brief explanation of a concept he wants students to understand. Then he asks one of the multiple-choice questions. Students get a minute to think about the question on their own and then answer it using a mobile device that sends their answers to Mazur's laptop. Next, he asks the students to turn to the person sitting next to them and talk about the question. The class typically erupts in a cacophony of voices, as it did that first time he told students to talk to each other because he couldn't figure out what else to do. Once the students have discussed the question for a few minutes, Mazur instructs them to answer the question again.

The rest of the broader six-point policy was adopted, including a clause saying professors must maintain a five-day presence on the physical campus

. His college is in the midst of transitioning to a faculty-based advising system in which students will have to meet with an instructor before registering for classes

“What gets missed in the conversation is that my face-to-face instructors, if they’re teaching five classes, they’re seeing students for 12-and-a-half hours. That needs to be demonstrated in the online instruction before we talk about office hours.”

A Web-browser-based tutoring platform called ASSISTments. Developed at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, ASSISTments, as its name suggests, performs tasks that extend the teacher’s reach in and beyond the classroom. As it generates sets of practice math problems geared to a range of skills, ASSISTments provides hints to students when they cannot answer problems correctly and then furnishes teachers with updated assessments of each student’s progress, as well as aggregated data on the entire class’s performance. The system prompts students to describe the logic they employed in answering specific problems, and teachers can communicate weekly or even daily with parents about their children’s work.

The campaign, now getting under way, is for the University of California, Los Angeles. The campaign proclaims that U.C.L.A. is the home of “the optimists,” people who are risk-takers, rule-breakers and game-changers.

The campaign is the first for U.C.L.A. from an agency named 160 Over 90, which is based in Philadelphia and recently opened an office in Newport Beach, Calif.

That work underscores the growing presence of universities and colleges as advertisers in the media. Their goals include selling themselves to prospective students and the parents of those students, seeking donations from alumni, recruiting faculty members and improving their standings in various surveys.

Uploaded on Jul 21, 2010 Awesome cloud-based information management tool that enables users to collect, highlight, access and share a variety of information, on a variety of devices

Awesome cloud-based information management tool that enables users to collect, highlight, access and share a variety of information, on a variety of devices.

Blockly is a web-based, graphical programming language. Users can drag blocks together to build an application. No typing required.

Teachers need to figure out what they want to get out of a flipped classroom, says Marine City High’s Ming. “What’s the purpose of doing it? Is it because you’re looking for more time in your curriculum to do hands-on activities?” An AP government teacher told Ming the best part of teaching his class was holding class discussions. The flipped classroom helped him get through the material with time to spare for conversation.

5 fantastic ways to use Wallwisher in the classroom: Writing activities – Wallwisher has a 160 character limit for each comment/post that you leave on the wall. Which is, in a way, a good thing! It allows for short story/collaborative projects, essay plans, note-taking, memos, poems, etc… the writing possibilities are endless! Brainstorming activities – This is a great ice breaker for the beginning of class! And better yet, it’s a great way to post a homework assignment/food for thought for that evening and then discuss it the next day. Vocabulary/Grammar Activities – You could easily use Wallwisher for practicing tenses, definitions, vocabulary matching (you can even use audio or video!), or even find a theme and have the students fill the sticky notes with their ideas for the vocabulary theme! Speaking activities – I was never one to love speaking in front of people so Wallwisher is a great way to create short speaking activities to help students feel more comfortable in front of a group of people. These activities could be to talk about a photo or video for X minutes, create a story based upon X number of photos, or even put debate topics on a sticky note for the student to create. Notifications – That is the original thought, right? You could use Wallwisher for orientation information, classroom rules, student profiles, daily/weekly plan, or even fun messages to other students who might be out sick or on trips with their families.