The National Survey of Student Engagement found that in 2011, 82 percent of first-year college students and more than half of seniors weren’t asked to do a single paper of 20 pages or more, while the bulk of writing assignments were for papers of one to five pages.
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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.
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Abortion laws cannot hinge on when life 'begins' - 15 views
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In his letter, "Arguments that should be aborted" (April 3), Mr Devathas Satianathan states that it is unclear how Associate Professor Tan Seow Hon's religious view is relevant. From Edwin Dai Weiyun - 03 April In his letter, "Arguments that should be aborted" (April 3), Mr Devathas Satianathan states that it is unclear how Associate Professor Tan Seow Hon's religious view is relevant. However, I would ask if her premise is that life begins at six weeks from conception, or possibly earlier, an interpretation that would be informed by her religious views. To say that her view on this has no bearing on her commentary is intellectual dishonesty. She also cited recent legislative developments in North Dakota, a Bible Belt state. Mr Jason Cheng responded, in "Let pregnant women make their own moral choices" (April 2), that six weeks is insufficient time for women to detect their pregnancy, which basically results in a de facto ban on abortion. Mr Devathas argues that, in the balance between preserving a baby's life and a mother's choice, Mr Cheng fails to acknowledge the former. Ironically, Mr Devathas fails to acknowledge the latter. Where he discusses a valid point is in the question: When does life begin? Answers to such a question, though, are varied across society and influenced by the religious views, or a lack thereof, of the individual. It is unwise and unconstitutional for the State to legislate or endorse the moral views of any religious group over other members of society. People who hold strong pro-life views are free to bring their babies to full term. The same liberty should be accorded to people who hold pro-choice views."
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This does not seems to be educational but maybe I misunderstood what would be fed to me through diigo. In any event since it come through, I pose this philosophical non-religious question: If you were 2 weeks pregnant and I punched you in the stomach which in turn killed the fetus, it would definitely be assault on you, but should I be criminally responsible for the fetus? If so, why?
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The Nerdy Teacher: What Makes Project Based Learning Effective? #Edchat #EngChat - 132 views
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1. OWNERSHIP is key. For this project, the students were not listening to me on why Twain was or was not a racist, they were showing me and the rest of class what they thought. They were invested in winning their argument. They knew that their work was going to determine if he was guilty or not. Although I gave the assignment, the students were in charge the rest of the way. It was their project and they wanted to do it win. When students feel they own what they are doing, they will work harder. When the audience is larger, they want to impress everyone. These are not crazy ideas, they are the results of owning the work they are doing. OWNERSHIP is a major factor in the value of PBL. 2. CREATIVITY is the another major part of the PBL and is closely linked with OWNERSHIP. Students were allowed to be creative in their work as a lawyer or witness. Witnesses needed to stay within character, but could add their own elements on the witness stand. Allowing the students to create gives them a bigger sense of OWNERSHIP. 3. Another part of the PBL is the COLLABORATION. Students were working with each other trying to decide the best plan of attack. Witnesses would meet with their lawyers and discuss how the questions they were going to ask and how they should dress. The Jury worked on group projects researching the previous public opinions on Twain and his writing. Students were sharing ideas freely with one another. I had three sections of American Lit at the time, so I had three trails running. Lawyers would help others in the other classes and trash talk the opposing lawyers as well. It was all in good fun, but the collaboration had students working hard with one another to accomplish this goal. 4. Depending on how you set up your project, CRITICAL THINKING, is also an important part of PBL. With my Twain Trail, students needed to think about both sides of the argument. Students needed to prepare their witnesses for potential cross-examination questions. They needed to
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The Value of Argument by @History__Girls - 23 views
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"Debating societies may seem to be the preserve of Oxbridge and private schools, but there is a place for debating in classrooms everywhere, argues Gemma Jones Debating societies may seem to be the preserve of Oxbridge and private schools, but there is a place for debating in classrooms everywhere. From 'Why William Won the Battle of Hastings' to 'causes of the First World War', history is a natural subject to use debates to deepen knowledge in lessons. However, across the curriculum there is scope to engage the pupils in a structured debate to challenge misconceptions, structure arguments and encourage independent study. Additionally, participating in debates can develop confidence and public speaking skills."
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Blogs vs. Term Papers - NYTimes.com - 8 views
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“It doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting blogs. But nobody would conflate interesting writing with premise, evidence, argument and conclusion.”
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Does he mean confuse or does he mean that there is no way for an argumentative assignment to be interesting? I'm also curious if Reeves is reading any academic and/or professional blogs. Perhaps I'm just angry at this sentence because I'm a blogger who works hard to make my argumentative posts interesting and valid to my readers..
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http://www.instituteofplay.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/IOP_PrintPlay_SocraticSmackdo... - 60 views
www.instituteofplay.org/...tPlay_SocraticSmackdown_v1.pdf
game_based_learning socratic smackdown game
shared by Deborah Baillesderr on 02 Sep 14
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When a Bookstore Closes, an Argument Ends - The New Yorker - 21 views
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Restaurants, bookstores, cafés—on a grander scale railway stations, on a lesser one chessboards near park benches—are the sinews of civil society.
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By atomizing our experience to the point of alienation—or, at best, by creating substitutes for common experience (“you might also like…” lists, Twitter exchanges instead of face-to-face conversations)—we lose the common thread of civil life.
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Writing in College - 1. Some crucial differences between high school and college writing - 55 views
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you will be asked to analyze the reading, to make a worthwhile claim about it that is not obvious (state a thesis means almost the same thing), to support your claim with good reasons, all in four or five pages that are organized to present an argument .
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They expect to see a claim that would encourage them to say, "That's interesting. I'd like to know more."
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They expect to see evidence, reasons for your claim, evidence that would encourage them to agree with your claim, or at least to think it plausible.
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This kind of argument is less like disagreeable wrangling, more like an amiable and lively conversation with someone whom you respect and who respects you; someone who is interested in what you have to say, but will not agree with your claims just because you state them; someone who wants to hear your reasons for believing your claims and also wants to hear answers to their questions.
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We also know that whatever it is we think, it is never the entire truth. Our conclusions are partial, incomplete, and always subject to challenge. So we write in a way that allows others to test our reasoning: we present our best thinking as a series of claims, reasons, and responses to imagined challenges, so that readers can see not only what we think, but whether they ought to agree.
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And that's all an argument is--not wrangling, but a serious and focused conversation among people who are intensely interested in getting to the bottom of things cooperatively.
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So your first step in writing an assigned paper occurs well before you begin writing: You must know what your instructor expects.
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When most of your instructors ask what the point of your paper is, they have in mind something different. By "point" or "claim" (the words are virtually synonymous with thesis), they will more often mean the most important sentence that you wrote in your essay, a sentence that appears on the page, in black in white; words that you can point to, underline, send on a postcard; a sentence that sums up the most important thing you want to say as a result of your reading, thinking, research, and writing. In that sense, you might state the point of your paper as "Well, I want to show/prove/claim/argue/demonstrate (any of those words will serve to introduce the point) that "Though Falstaff seems to play the role of Hal's father, he is, in fact, acting more like a younger brother who . . . ."" If you include in your paper what appears after I want to prove that, then that's the point of your paper, its main claim that the rest of your paper supports.
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A good point or claim typically has several key characteristics: it says something significant about what you have read, something that helps you and your readers understand it better; it says something that is not obvious, something that your reader didn't already know; it is at least mildly contestable, something that no one would agree with just by reading it; it asserts something that you can plausibly support in five pages, not something that would require a book.
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Museum Box - 106 views
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anything from a text file to a movie. You can also view and comment on the museum boxes submitted by others. More... Our inspiration Thomas Clarkson The project was inspired by the anti-slavery campaigner - Thomas Clarkson, who did exactly as described above. Thomas Clarkson's Box He carried around a box of items (ranging from African produce to diagrams of transportation ships) to illustrate his arguments during his campaign. Create your own
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Create a box demonstrating what you know about any subject. Incorporate text, images, video or audio. Great for describing an artist, author, character, location...
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Create a box demonstrating what you know about any subject. Incorporate text, images, video or audio. Great for describing an artist, author, character, location...
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Place files, images, text, movies, or sounds concerning a particular topic in a virtual box.
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Make a virtual collection of artifacts to interpret any topic, including yourself.
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This site provides the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box. What items, for example, would you put in a box to describe your life; the life of a Victorian Servant or Roman soldier; or to show that slavery was wrong and unnecessary? You can display anything from a text file to a movie. You can also view and comment on the museum boxes submitted by others
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Their description ... provides the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box. What items, for example, would you put in a box to describe your life; the life of a Victorian Servant or Roman soldier; or to show that slavery was wrong and unnecessary? You can display anything from a text file to a movie. You can also view and comment on the museum boxes submitted by others Shared by Kathy Walker with the following note: "Attached is a cool idea for projects & assessments that can be used with any subject area."
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This is a great social studies site for students to collect "artifacts" about an historical person or event. Site has some bugs, but the finished product is very unique!
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Intersections: History and New Media: Wiki in the History Classroom - 5 views
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Students did not agree on the merits of the wiki. Some were deeply offended when other students eliminated or modified their contributions. Others found the chance to pick apart other’s words and conclusions exhilarating. Regardless, most students seemed to grasp the important lesson I hoped to share: that history is the conversation we have about the past. History is about the authorial choices scholars make. History is about the evidence included and the evidence excluded. By asking students to participate in a joint-writing exercise, they were compelled to pay attention to the language others used, the phrasings and structure employed, the anecdotes emphasized, the facts obscured. I told them the story of an undergraduate English professor I had who spent an entire class session discussing why Shakespeare began Macbeth with the word “when”. Words matter. Words shape arguments. They determine meaning, and they form our view of the world around us, including our view of the history of the world around us. Students also came to appreciate that history was not a bag of facts we historians force them to memorize. Instead, as Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob suggest, history is the product of that collective effort of truth seeking.
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I still caution students about using Wikipedia. But I think the wiki can help our students see themselves as part of that democratic conversation so important to our profession. Throwing their ideas into the ring for others to challenge forces students to defend their ideas, modify their conclusions, and reconsider their assumptions. The wiki, while not perfect, may help us change the way our students think about history. It may help them be more attentive to language and argument. Importantly, it may help them value civil discourse as a civic virtue. These are good lessons for history students and for their professors. —Kevin B. Sheets is associate professor of history at the State University of New York, College at Cortland and project director of the “American Dream Project,” a Teaching American History grant-based project in upstate New York. He regularly teaches courses in historical methods and American intellectual and cultural history.
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Colleges Using Athletics to Boost Profile - Athletic Business - 1 views
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For many students, the college experience includes game days watching athletes wearing the school colors take the field or court. But in today's environment of rising costs, soaring student debt and declining enrollment, college and university leaders are sometimes finding they have to explain the need for what has become an "arms race" among athletic departments. The argument might be made that much of the money that is required to keep college athletic teams going comes from ticket sales and outside sources such as alumni contributions. The other side of that coin is that some of the cost is borne by students, even those with no interest in sports. In the case of private institutions, it is up to school officials to decide whether the expense is worthwhile. The public has an obvious and greater role in the determination of the role and funding of sports in state institutions.
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A Social Network Can Be a Learning Network - The Digital Campus - The Chronicle of High... - 98 views
chronicle.com/...129609
social network sociallearning Social Media learning education millenials socialnetworking socialbookmarking pln ple optometry
shared by tapiatanova on 08 Nov 11
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Kate Pok liked it
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Sharing student work on a course blog is an example of what Randall Bass and Heidi Elmendorf, of Georgetown University, call "social pedagogies." They define these as "design approaches for teaching and learning that engage students with what we might call an 'authentic audience' (other than the teacher), where the representation of knowledge for an audience is absolutely central to the construction of knowledge in a course."
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External audiences certainly motivate students to do their best work. But students can also serve as their own authentic audience when asked to create meaningful work to share with one another.
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The last sentence is especially important in institutional contexts where the staff voices their distrust against "open scholarship" (Weller 2011), web 2.0 and/or open education. Where "privacy" is deemed the most important thing in dealing with new technologies, advocates of an external audience have to be prepared for certain questions.
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yes! nothing but barriers! However, it is unclear if the worries about pravacy are in regards to students or is it instructors who fear teaching in the open. everyone cites FERPA and protection of student identities, but I have yet to hear any student refusing to work in the open...
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Students most likely won't find this difficult. After all, you're asking them to surf the Web and tag pages they like. That's something they do via Facebook every day. By having them share course-related content with their peers in the class, however, you'll tap into their desires to be part of your course's learning community. And you might be surprised by the resources they find and share.
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While keynote speakers and session leaders are speaking, audience members are sharing highlights, asking questions, and conversing with colleagues on Twitter
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Ask your students to create accounts on Twitter or some other back-channel tool and share ideas that occur to them in your course. You might give them specific assignments, as does the University of Connecticut's Margaret Rubega, who asks students in her ornithology class to tweet about birds they see. During a face-to-face class session, you could have students discuss their reading in small groups and share observations on the back channel. Or you could simply ask them to post a single question about the week's reading they would like to discuss.
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A back channel provides students a way to stay connected to the course and their fellow students. Students are often able to integrate back channels into their daily lives, checking for and sending updates on their smartphones, for instance. That helps the class become more of a community and gives students another way to learn from each other.
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Deep learning is hard work, and students need to be well motivated in order to pursue it. Extrinsic factors like grades aren't sufficient—they motivate competitive students toward strategic learning and risk-averse students to surface learning.
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Social pedagogies provide a way to tap into a set of intrinsic motivations that we often overlook: people's desire to be part of a community and to share what they know with that community.
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Online, social pedagogies can play an important role in creating such a community. These are strong motivators, and we can make use of them in the courses we teach.
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The papers they wrote for my course weren't just academic exercises; they were authentic expressions of learning, open to the world as part of their "digital footprints."
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Collaborative documents need not be text-based works. Sarah C. Stiles, a sociologist at Georgetown, has had her students create collaborative timelines showing the activities of characters in a text, using a presentation tool called Prezi.com. I used that tool to have my cryptography students create a map of the debate over security and privacy. They worked in small groups to brainstorm arguments, and contributed those arguments to a shared debate map synchronously during class.
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A great blog post on social pedagogies and how they can be incorporated in university/college classes. A good understanding of creating authentic learning experiences through social media.
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A great blog post on social pedagogies and how they can be incorporated in university/college classes. A good understanding of creating authentic learning experiences through social media.
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A great blog post on social pedagogies and how they can be incorporated in university/college classes. A good understanding of creating authentic learning experiences through social media.
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Free Technology for Teachers: Socratic Smackdown - A Game for Learning and Practicing D... - 131 views
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forty students
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text-based question
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debate a question
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Pontydysgu - Bridge to Learning - Educational Research - 26 views
Argument-Driven Inquiry - 108 views
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5 Things Every Teacher Should be Doing to Meet the Common Core State Standards - 40 views
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The Common Core State Standards highlight five shifts that should be happening in every classroom. Teachers should: * Lead High-Level, Text-Based Discussions * Focus on Process, Not Just Content * Create Assignments for Real Audiences and with Real Purpose * Teach Argument, Not Persuasion * Increase Text Complexity
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Physicists Seek To Lose The Lecture As Teaching Tool : NPR - 4 views
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key is to get them to do the assigned reading — what he calls the "information-gathering" part of education — before they come to class.
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"It used to be just be the 'sage on the stage,' the source of knowledge and information," he says. "We now know that it's not good enough to have a source of information." Mazur sees himself now as the "guide on the side" – a kind of coach, working to help students understand all the knowledge and information that they have at their fingertips. Mazur says this new role is a more important one.