Group items tagged

There's an atmosphere of grand fragility hanging over America's colleges. The grandeur comes from the surging application rates, the international renown, the fancy new dining and athletic facilities. The fragility comes from the fact that colleges are charging more money, but it's not clear how much actual benefit they are providing.

The author reflects on student evaluations, citing a study that asked students what they expect from their professors (also talks about how it applies to K-12 schools)

Here's something to chew on.

An excellent article on the challenges we all face in become better at thinking critically and writing well. I have found that most students do better presenting arguments in written form when they have engaged in in-depth discussion, as then questioning and peer responses can prompt deeper thinking and make real the need to both cite and explain evidence. The Shared Inquiry method used in Great Books programs provides a focus on open, interpretive questions that require students to make an defend claims about the meaning of complex texts. The model lessons suggest a sequence of activities that supports multiple close readings, collaborative discussions, and writing throughout the process.

Free and easy tool for remembering all of your online sign-in data.  If you've been enjoying Diigo in Education as much as I have, you might have signed up for some new Web 2.0 services and need to remember the passwords for all of them.  Plus, who wants to log in to a site over and over?  Just make sure you read about the different levels of security if offers.

NCTE's Student/Instructor Program helps introduce pre-service teachers to the networking, resources, professional development, and collegiality of our profession. This member service allows teacher educators to share the latest developments and newest resources in English language arts with their students.

ow that we are using the Internet in the classroom to support instruction, it is important the area of assessment be addressed. One usable method for teachers is to provide a rubric for student use and for both formative and summative assessment purposes. Another is to provide some type of graphic organizer. Below you will find a collection of assessment rubrics and graphic organizers that may be helpful to you as you design your own.

from NCTE's Monthly Intellectual Property Reports, Troy Hicks writes: "In November 2008, educators were introduced to the "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education," and our concept of how to deal with copyright issues in the classroom has, literally, been transformed. As the official policy of NCTE related to fair use in the teaching of English, it is a document worth our attention as students learn to comprehend and compose texts utilizing a variety of forms of media."

" Because these students cannot fully portray their family's finances, the amount of aid they receive may not fairly reflect their needs."

"The Department has provided these templates to assist school communities to develop agreements as to what constitutes acceptable use of internet, Ultranet, netbooks and other online and digital technologies in their communities. These agreement are templates. Schools can add and/or delete information where necessary to make them relevant to their school environment."

Cathy Davidson discusses the need for a fourth "R" -pertaining to "algoRithim" - It is important, she argues, because, "in the 21st century, we need [an]...expanded push towards the literacy that defines our era, computational literacy.   Algorithms are as basic to the way the 21st century digital age works as reading, writing, and arithmetic were to the late 18th century Industrial era." 

"The classic "3 R's" of learning are, of course, Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmetic.  For the 21st century, we need to add a fourth R--and it will help inspire the other three:  Algorithm. "