An example of the "mother blog" concept in an implementation of student blogging in the residential honors college at Virginia Tech. (Posts from all student blogs are aggregated on this blog as well as links to the blogs/comments themselves.) Some stunning examples of student blogs. Particularly see the blog "Catching Up."
"moving from episodic to continuous learning -- getting a degree doesn't end your education any more and everyone will have to continue to learn
moving away from having faculty that were the conveyers of content to -- now that there's so much more information available -- becoming more curators of the content, of helping guide all the sources,
some thought that the emphasis on degrees may be reduced as other kinds of assessments come into play,
"If we recognize the need to organize ourselves differently, deliver education differently, then how do we fund it, how do we govern it?"
moving away from students being associated with an individual institution to students aggregating their own educations from a whole variety of sources and players
although there are counselors and advisers available in higher education "what a lot of people need is more of a coach, not necessarily associated with a particular institution
needs to reorganize itself to serve students
digital badges that signify various accomplishments
Featuring over 3,500 content pages, MrNussbaum.com is one of the most popular destinations on the internet for parents, homeschoolers, teachers, and students. MrNussbaum.com was created by Greg Nussbaum, a Virginia public school teacher with experience teaching 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classrooms.
In Roman architecture, an insula (Latin for "island," plural insulae) was a kind of apartment building that housed most of the urban citizen population of ancient Rome, including ordinary people of lower- or middle-class status (the plebs) and all but the wealthiest from the upper-middle class (the equites). The traditional elite and the very wealthy lived in domus, large single-family residences, but the two kinds of housing were intermingled in the city and not segregated into separate neighborhoods.[1] The ground-level floor of the insula was used for tabernae, shops and businesses, with the living space upstairs. Like modern apartment buildings, an insula might have a name, usually referring to the owner of the building.[2]
It simply doesn’t make sense to try
to “purge ‘ineffective’ teachers and principals.” His listener, almost giddy
with gratitude now, prepares to chime in, as Samuelson, without pausing, delivers
the punch line: That’s right, it’s time to stop blaming teachers and start .
. . blaming students!
His focus is not on
students’ achievements (the intellectual accomplishments of individual kids)
but only on “student achievement” (the aggregate results of standardized
tests)
As
I’ve noted elsewhere,
we have reason to worry when schooling is discussed primarily in the context
of “global competitiveness” rather than in terms of what children need or
what contributes to a democratic culture
Upon hearing someone castigate students for being
insufficiently motivated, a noneconomist might be inclined to ask two
questions. The first is: “Motivated to do what, exactly”? Anything they’re
told, no matter how unengaging, inappropriate, or, well, demotivating?
Whenever I see students made to cram facts into their short-term memories for
a test, practice a series of decontextualized skills on yet another worksheet,
listen passively to a lecture, or inch their way through the insipid prose of
a corporate-produced textbook, I find myself thinking of a comment made by
Frederick Herzberg, a critic of traditional workplace management: “Idleness,
indifference, and irresponsibility,” he said, “are healthy responses to
absurd work.”
The more you reward people for doing something, or for
doing it well, the less interest they typically come to have in whatever they
had to do to get the reward.
People
who blame students for not being “motivated” tend to think educational
success mean little more than higher scores on bad tests and they’re apt to
see education itself as a means to making sure our corporations will beat
their corporations. The sort of schooling that results is the type almost
guaranteed to . . . kill students’ motivation.
one thing that’s happened is a concatenation of
rewards and punishments, including grades, which teach students that learning
is just a means to an end.
Another thing that’s happened is teaching that’s meant
primarily to raise test scores.
inner-city kids get the worst of the
sort of schooling that’s not about exploring and discovering and questioning
but only about working hard (often at rote tasks) and being nice (read:
obedient).
“Motivation is weak because more
students…don't like school, don't work hard and don't do well.” But why
don’t they like school (which is the key to understanding why, assuming his
premise is correct, they don’t succeed)? What has happened to their desire
to figure out how things work, the hunger to make sense of things, with which
all children start out?
if you want to see
(intrinsically) motivated kids, you need to visit classrooms or schools that
take a nontraditional approach to education, places where students are more
likely to be absorbed and frequently delighted, where what they’re doing is
not merely “rigorous” (a word often applied to very difficult busywork) but
meaningful.
Alfie Kohn's commentary on an article written by Robert J. Samuelson. Samuelson argues in his article that the problem with education reform is not the usual suspects like ineffective teachers, but kids who are lazy and unmotivated. Interesting read with thoughtful information about student motivation.
This site has a 30 second blurb on many topics that we teach from the money supply to Henri Matisse from the space station to the properties of chemicals.
Qwiki allows users to learn more about a variety of topics through multimedia and storytelling. Users can also contribute content to make Qwiki even better.
Qwiki instantly makes a 1 minute educational movie on any topic. A must try resource! Works by typing in a search term. Great for visual/auditory learners... and teachers. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/ICT+&+Web+Tools
So why do I use Diigo?
I like its ability to enhance my bookmarking with highlights and sticky notes, that are retained with the page when I go back to it.
I like that you can highlight and publish easily from Diigo to you blog or an email, and a reference appears automatically along with the posting.
I like the ability to create lists on specific topics that can be shared.
I like the ability to create groups to pool resources for specific subjects. I recently joined a few Diigo groups and have had some very useful sites brought to my attention.
I like that you can access and search the bookmarks anywhere by full-text and tags.
I like to search for the most popular bookmarks on a particular subject.
I like the different ways to share and aggregate information that Diigo offers. I have set it up so that a list of my new bookmarks appears on this blog on a weekly basis but this is just one option. You can now choose to automatically
The tool bar is easy to download and makes it easy to use and aspect of Diigo whenever you are on line.
Of course you can keep things private if you choose to but that is really defeating the purpose of Diigo in the first place.
Diigo also began offering, on Sept 19th, a Diigo Education Account Facility. I haven’t investigated this yet but a post about it was put onto the SLAV Bright Ideas blog. It is worth looking at. From Diigo
‘The Diigo Educator Accounts offer a suite of features that makes it incredibly easy for teachers to get their entire class of students or their peers started on collaborative research using Diigo’s powerful web annotation and social bookmarking technology.’
For an educator account, you do have to apply and fill out how/why you want to use Diigo in your school.
But most importantly we are interesed in e-portfolios because there is emerging, often powerful evidence from practitioners and learners of how e-portfolios can promote more profound forms of learning, as well their further potential in supporting for example transition between institutions and stages of education, and in supporting professional development and applications for professional accreditation.
An e-portfolio is a purposeful aggregation of digital items - ideas, evidence, reflections, feedback etc. which 'presents' a selected audience with evidence of a person's learning and/or ability
Behind any product, or presentation, lie rich and complex processes of planning, synthesising, sharing, discussing, reflecting, giving, receifing and responding to feedback.
Descriptions of e-portfolio processes also tend to include the concepts of learners drawing from both informal and and formal learning activities to create their e-portfolios
Use of iPads in MGT30700 (Project Management), Fall 2010 from Aug 23-Oct 8
Report Prepared by
Corey M. Angst, Ph.D. & Emily Malinowski (MBA 2011)
Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame
December 21, 2010
First, our findings suggest the greatest value of the iPad may not be its ability to function as an eBook reader but instead its capacity to function as a consolidator or aggregator of information. Second, a statistically significant proportion of students felt the iPad, 1) makes class more interesting, 2) encourages exploration of additional topics, 3) provides functions/tools not possible with a textbook, and 4) helps students more effectively manage their time.
See wiki https://wiki.nd.edu/display/oitepublishing/iPad+Configuration+for+Pilot. It also includes an Enterprise Deployment Guide
instead of using failure as a valuable teaching tool, education discourages it as, well, a sign of failure
each assignment is graded based on its proximity to success, and the final grade is determined by the aggregate of each individual grade, failure is preserved and carried with the student throughout the course. The result is that students become failure-adverse, demoralized by failure, and focused more on the grade than the education.
reverse this trend is by using gaming in education. Students who fail in video games do not suffer the same blow to their self-esteem as those who receive a low grade on an exam or report card. They simply try it again
when a student hands in a paper he is given comments and told to rewrite it, and must rewrite it over and over until it is an A-quality paper. Only then it is accepted.