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Steve Ransom

Wikipedia:FAQ/Schools - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

  • Students should never use information in Wikipedia (or any other online encyclopedia) for formal purposes (such as school essays) until they have verified and evaluated the information based on external sources. For this reason, Wikipedia, like any encyclopedia, is a great starting place for research but not always a great ending place.
  • It is possible for a given Wikipedia article to be biased, outdated, or factually incorrect. This is true of any resource. One should always double-check the accuracy of important facts, regardless of the source. In general, popular Wikipedia articles are more accurate than ones that receive little traffic, because they are read more often and therefore any errors are corrected in a more timely fashion. Wikipedia articles may also suffer from issues such as Western bias, but hopefully this will also improve with time. For more information
  • Although the majority of edits attempt to improve the encyclopedia, vandalism is frequent.
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  • If an anonymous or relatively new user changes a statistic or date by even a little bit, without justifying their edit, they are particularly likely to raise a red flag. If an individual continues to vandalize after being warned, then they may even be blocked from further editing.
  • keeps a full history of every change to every article
  • It is for this reason that readers must be particularly diligent in verifying Wikipedia against its external sources, as discussed above. It is also a good idea, if you feel uncomfortable about an article, to check its history for recent "bad-faith" edits. If you find a piece of uncorrected vandalism, you might even decide to help future users by correcting it yourself. That's a great feature of Wikipedia.
  • Wikipedia can be an excellent starting place for further research.
  • Students can compare information in Wikipedia with information in other encyclopedias or books in the library. As a general rule, contributors to Wikipedia are encouraged to cite their sources, but, of course, not all do. For the sake of verifiability, it is advisable to cite an article that has listed its sources. Most of our better articles have sections such as "References," "Sources," "Notes," "Further reading," or "External links," which generally contain such information.
  • The 2008/9 Wikipedia Selection for Schools is a selection of 5,500 articles deemed suitable for school children and has been checked and edited for this audience and protected against editing or vandalism. It contains about the equivalent content to a 20 volume encyclopaedia organized around school curriculum subjects, and is available online and as a free download for use by schools.
  • Educators can use Wikipedia as a way of teaching students to develop hierarchies of credibility that are essential for navigating and conducting research on the Internet.
  • Wikipedia's objective is to become a compendium of published knowledge about notable subjects.
Brianna Crowley

Transforming Teaching - Rick Hess Straight Up - Education Week - 0 views

  • Teachers around the country embrace accountability when it comes with the equivalent authority in decision making.
  • For us, "accountability" doesn't simply mean counting test scores - and "autonomy" definitely does not mean that teachers get to close their doors and do what they want.
  • Real change will come teacher by teacher.
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  • We must redefine accountability as relational rather than numerical. Accountability isn't about the numbers we achieve on a test. Real accountability is accepting the trust the public has in America's teachers and embracing our professional and individual responsibility for student learning and well-being.
Kate Pok

The trouble with Khan Academy - Casting Out Nines - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 2 views

  • Let’s start with what Khan Academy is. Khan Academy is a collection of video lectures that give demonstrations of mechanical processes. When it comes to this purpose, KA videos are, on the average, pretty good. Sal Khan is the main reason; he is approachable and has a knack for making mechanical processes seem understandable. Of course, his videos are not perfect. He tends to ramble a lot and get sidetracked; he doesn’t use visuals as effectively as he could; he’s often sloppy and sometimes downright wrong with his math; and he sometimes omits topics from his subjects that really need to be there (LU decomposition in linear algebra, for example). But on balance, KA is a great resource for the niche in which it was designed to work: giving demonstrations of mechanical processes.
  • But let’s also be honest about what Khan Academy is not. Khan Academy is not a substitute for an actual course of study in mathematics. It is not a substitute for a live teacher. And it is not a coherent curriculum of study that engages students at all the cognitive levels at which they need to be engaged. It’s OK that it’s not these things. We don’t walk into a Mexican restaurant and fault it for not serving spaghetti. I don’t fault Khan Academy for not being a complete educational resource, because it wasn’t designed for that purpose. Again, Khan Academy is a great resource for the niche in which it was designed to work. But when you try to extend it out of that niche — as Bill Gates and others would very much like to do — all kinds of things go wrong.
  • When we say that someone has “learned” a subject, we typically mean that they have shown evidence of mastery not only of basic cognitive processes like factual recall and working mechanical exercises but also higher-level tasks like applying concepts to new problems and judging between two equivalent concepts. A student learning calculus, for instance, needs to demonstrate that s/he can do things like take derivatives of polynomials and use the Chain Rule. But if this is all they can demonstrate, then it’s stretching it to say that the student has “learned calculus”, because calculus is a lot more than just executing mechanical processes correctly and quickly. To say that it is not — that knowledge of calculus consists in the ability to perform algorithmic processes quickly and accurately — is to adopt an impoverished definition of the subject that renders a great intellectual pursuit into a collection of party tricks.
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  • Even if the student can solve optimization or related rates problems just like the ones in the book and in the lecture — but doesn’t know how to start if the optimization or related rates problem does not match their template — then the student hasn’t really learned calculus. At that point, those “applied” problems are just more mechanical processes.
  • Khan Academy is great for learning about lots of different subjects. But it’s not really adequate for learning those subjects on a level that really makes a difference in the world. Learning at these levels requires more than watching videos (or lectures) and doing exercises. It takes hard work (by both the learner and the instructor), difficult assignments that get students to work at these higher levels, open channels of communication that do not just go one way, and above all a relationship between learner and instructor that engenders trust.
  •  
    All the reasons I like and don't like Khan Academy videos....
Patricia Christian

Dinah-Might Adventures, LP - Foldables®, VKV's®, & Equivalency Flips™ - 18 views

  •  
    Foldables are a great way to help your students organize their learning using visual, kinesthetic vocabulary and notetaking.  Well worth the purchase.
emily hough

StudyJams - 10 views

  •  
    various games for equivalent fractions, Mixed numbers and Decimals (also has related topics - percents, ratios etc.)
Glenda Baker

The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism, By Jonathan Lethem (Harper's Magazine) - 80 views

  • courts were asked whether the photographer, amateur or professional, required permission before he could capture and print an image. Was the photographer stealing from the person or building whose photograph he shot, pirating something of private and certifiable value? Those early decisions went in favor of the pirates.
  • Thomas Jefferson, for one, considered copyright a necessary evil: he favored providing just enough incentive to create, nothing more, and thereafter allowing ideas to flow freely, as nature intended.
  • In the contemporary world, though, the act of “copying” is in no meaningful sense equivalent to an infringement—we make a copy every time we accept an emailed text, or send or forward one—and is impossible anymore to regulate or even describe.
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  • The notion of a collage text
  •  
    A great article that challenges what most of us consider acceptable attribution practices by tracing some interesting examples of known works & creators.
Kate Pok

Figuring Grades - 67 views

  • Always convert all grades and numbers to a system of 100. It will not only be easier for you to figure out overall grades, but it will simplify your explanations to parents and administrators if they can see your grades in terms of percents.
  • FAILING GRADES BELOW "50" ALWAYS GET MARKED AS A SCORE OF "50"
  • All letter grades are converted to a numerical equivalent, equi-spaced from each other, based on a 100 point system. Then they are averaged as you would with other grades. Here is a chart you can use: A++ = 100 (perfect paper with extra-credit) A+ = 98 A = 95 A- = 92 B+ = 88 B = 85 B- = 82 C+ = 78 C = 75 C- = 72 D+ = 68 D = 65 D- = 62 F = 55
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  • EXAMPLE: The student in the example received: 25, 80, 40, 95, 90. Average = 66%, Grade = D The student's grades should be converted to 50 , 80, 50 , 95, 90. Average = 73%, Grade = C, which is a better representation of grades of A, A-, B-, F, F.
BTerres

The Dicey Calculus of Contemporary Cooking - WSJ.com - 37 views

  • What's the difference between a 10-inch skillet and a 12-inch skillet?
  • Not just a mere two inches. The larger pan has 44% more surface area.
  • the rate of evaporation of a liquid is proportional to its exposed surface area, a sauce in a larger, flatter skillet will reduce far more rapidly than one in a taller, narrower pan
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  • A cook who doubles a recipe but keeps the same size pot and the same cooking time will wind up with a watery sauce.
  • try to stir-fry a batch of meat in a 10-inch skillet instead of a 12-inch skillet, and "instead of sautéeing you'll end up steaming it.
  • Think you can substitute an eight-inch cake pan for a nine-inch?
  • Don't—the nine-inch holds 27% more batter.
  • one teaspoon of table salt is equivalent to 1.5 teaspoons of Morton or two teaspoons of Diamond Crystal.
  • "I don't have table salt at home, because I made that mistake too often," Mr. Willoughby says.
  •  
    Interesante artículo que relaciona matemáticas y cocina. Porcentajes, áreas, volúmenes...
Ed Webb

Imagining College Without Grades :: Inside Higher Ed :: Higher Education's Source for N... - 0 views

  • A professor who tells his students that “grades are the death of composition.” Another said: “Grades create a facade of coherence.”
    • Dana Huff
       
      Interesting. I agree. I wish that we didn't have to grade student writing and could just give written or oral feedback. I love the "facade of coherence" comment.
  • politically impossible
    • Dana Huff
       
      Key words. Grading is political.
  • grades were squelching intellectual curiosity.
    • Dana Huff
       
      Totally true in more places than prestigious law schools
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  • growing use of e-portfolios
    • Dana Huff
       
      I like portfolios for demonstrating learning, but I haven't learned how to effectively integrate them into my own classroom.
  • most professors and students are much more likely to complain about grading than to praise its accuracy or value.
    • Dana Huff
       
      Amen!
  • Done right, she said, eliminating grades promotes rigor.
  • the elimination of grades — if they are replaced with narrative evaluations, rubrics, and clear learning goals — results in more accountability and better ways for a colleges to measure the success not only of students but of its academic programs.
    • Ed Webb
       
      This strikes me intuitively as correct. Grades are a substitute for thoughful assessment of learning outcomes, not an equivalent to it.
  • the idea of consistent and clear grading just doesn’t reflect the mobility of students
    • Ed Webb
       
      Absolutely. My own institution, Dickinson College, sends ~70% of its students abroad for at least a semester, and most often a year. I have experience in education in different national contexts, and grading conventions simply do not translate.
  • ending grades can mean much more work for both students and faculty members.
    • Ed Webb
       
      Aye, there's the rub. Those of us who are serious about learning - students and faculty - have to recognize that better learning is more work. On the other hand, it's more fun, too.
  • When faculty members are providing written, detailed analyses of multiple course objectives and are also — for majors — relating performance to larger goals for the major, so much more is taking place she said, than in a letter grade.
    • Ed Webb
       
      Yes. Grades are a terrible assessment tool.
  • the training that colleges provide to professors before they start producing narrative evaluations, and officials of the no-grades colleges all said that training was extensive, and that faculty members needed mentors as they started out.
    • Ed Webb
       
      And how much training do faculty get before they start handing out grades?
  • they end up favoring the evaluation system
    • Ed Webb
       
      This is the point. Users have to be educated in the advantages of the system - once they have been, they are likely to favor it over grading.
D. S. Koelling

Views: What's High School For? - Inside Higher Ed - 35 views

  • In theory, dual enrollment enables high school students to accrue college credits for very little cost and imbues them with a sense of confidence that they can complete college work. If students can succeed in college classes while still in high school, conventional wisdom holds, they will be more likely to matriculate at the postsecondary level.
  • In reality, though, dual enrollment may do more harm than good.
  • The problem is that high school is not college and completion of a dual enrollment high school class is not always a guarantee that students have learned the material.
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  • As a result, classes that used to be termed “college-prep” are now seen as college proper.
  • In practice, however, courses covered in a high school setting on a high school calendar are often vastly different in practice.
  • This is not a criticism of high school teachers. Many are excellent educators and care deeply about students. But they often teach more classes than college faculty do, have myriad extracurricular responsibilities, and lack the requisite training that enables college faculty to introduce best practices in the field. In contrast, college faculty members expect a higher level of work from students, including having them study independently, write in the discipline and be exposed to the latest research. They are less likely to offer extra credit, or evaluate students based on an inflated high school norm.
  • High school students, especially sophomores and juniors, are not like college students. A collection of 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds are normally at a different stage of intellectual and moral development than are college students. Treating a high school student like a college student does not always do them a favor.
  • This student, as a sophomore in high school, earned a “C” in a “college” English course, which exempts her from our basic English 111 College Writing class. Even though her ACT score indicates her writing skills are deficient, we are limited in what we can do. Like many students who have already passed a “college” class, she thinks she already has the necessary writing skills to be successful in college. We know she very likely does not. Our willingness to increase student access by accepting transfer credit means that, without taking this student’s credits away, we cannot help her with her writing. Instead, by virtue of an average performance as a high school sophomore, this student will be placed into college classes for which she is unprepared.
  • Most colleges willingly accept credits from like institutions because we trust that our courses are equivalent and that our faculty are credentialed. I doubt that same trust applies to high schools. The best service a high school can provide is to prepare students for college, not substitute for it.
  •  
    High school dual enrollment programs may not be helping students succeed in college.
Brian Mull

Education Week's Digital Directions: Educators Move Beyond the Hype Over Skype - 52 views

    • Brian Mull
       
      This isn't just for Skype. Anything we do in the classroom should be targeting specific educational goals.
    • Brian Mull
       
      ...or connecting with university professors or experts in the field.
    • Brian Mull
       
      Some, such as brian Crosby have done this. http://learningismessy.com/blog/?p=196
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  • In Virginia’s Albemarle County district, Fisher encourages her teachers to use Skype and other collaboration tools because she believes there is no equivalent for giving students an audience for their work. She compares it to a team sport, in which the Skype activity is game day, and other days of class spent in preparation are like after-school practices. “The fact that there’s a game on Friday night ramps up practice on Monday afternoon,” says Fisher. “When you look at what the Web allows us to do, every kid in your classroom can have a worldwide audience. That’s true for writing, and that’s true for some of these oral-presentation types of things,” such as videoconferencing.
  • But according to research funded by Skype Technologies, finding other teachers to connect with remains more frustrating for educators interested in using Skype than gaining permission from administrators and school technology personnel to use the software.
    • Brian Mull
       
      But make no mistake - the latter is still a frustrating sticking point in many schools and districts.
Jeff Suarez Grant

Judith Scott-Clayton: The Dark Side of Choice in Higher Education - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Innovative technology and marketing strategies might be able to nudge students toward better decisions without limiting their freedom to choose. For example, it would be much easier for students to identify and compare relevant courses if academic catalogs were less like phone books and more like, say, Netflix. Then students could interactively search and browse on dimensions like course subject, timing, difficulty, prerequisites, major requirements or instructor ratings. Over time, students could be offered personalized suggestions based on their previous choices. New students could even be offered the equivalent of a prix fixe menu, offering a limited selection of prepackaged pathways while still allowing students to choose à la carte.
Erin DeBell

SPAN 103N W01 S111: Foro de lenguaje y cultura - Semana 9 - El embarazo - Due Sunday, 7/17 - 7 views

    • Erin DeBell
       
      Suggestions: Use past tense (preterite) more often to talk about things that happened in the past. The verbs you recognized are good examples.  At this point, though, not only should you recognize words, but phrases and TENSES/CONCEPTS, as well.  These are the grammar examples you will need to share on your chart.  Did you see any reflexive verbs?  Commands?  Preterite?  If so, share the example AND the English equivalent (translation).
    • Erin DeBell
       
      Also, for your chart you might end up being short on Country-Specific resources.  When looking for things to share, think about sharing info from a particular country.  It is too late for this post, but since your resource is from California, perhaps you could find some info on the Hispanic population in California.  Where are they from?  Then pick one of those countries of origin and find some info about it for us.  Bingo!  Country-specific example for your chart.
    • Erin DeBell
       
      Since this forum is over, you can post this info on the "country-specific catch-up forum" that I will make available immediately.
    • Erin DeBell
       
      I sense a lot of stress about the forum requirements, so I am going to provide group feedback this way.  Make sure to click on each "sticky note" to get my feedback on the post.  This will help you complete your chart as best as possible.
    • Erin DeBell
       
      HIGHLIGHTS: You will see a lot of highlights on this page.   Pink/red highlights indicate a mistake is present.  I have not highlighted ALL mistakes, just some that you should be able to fix with what you know at this point. GREEN means GOOD!  I have highlighted many phrases that indicate good/correct grammar usage.  Sometimes I highlight in green things that I really like :-)  Green means GO!!!
    • Erin DeBell
       
      YELLOW highlights are for important things - read them!
    • Erin DeBell
       
      FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE WORRIED ABOUT BEING SHORT ON COUNTRY-SPECIFIC REFERENCES, I WILL SHARE IDEAS ON HOW TO INCLUDE THOSE AND PROVIDE A SEPARATE "Country-Specific Catch-Up Forum" where you can explore individual countries a bit further.
  • siertas
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  • Vi la pagina
  • Me encanta
  • unico
  • Lo unico que puedes hacer es revisar y leer tus viejos forums y buscar ejemplos que
  • usastes.
  • Me pongo
  • nervioso
  • Completado
    • Erin DeBell
       
      If you want to say "I completed," you should use the preterite.  Verb = COMPLETAR.  Yo completé.
  • están encontrando
  • mucho las
    • Erin DeBell
       
      muchas
  • encontre
  • promueve
  • parecer
  • matres
  • olvido
    • Erin DeBell
       
      This post is very interesting.  The quote included is informative and summarizes the findings of the source Gabriela consulted.  This information is very useful for all of us.  The content is excellent, but I would like to see more linguistic information.  For example, did you pick up any new words from reading this article?  If so, you should list them (WITH English translations for the benefit of classmates).   Also, to obtain country-specific resources, you could have looked up premature births in Spanish-speaking countries and focused on one in particular, perhaps sharing information or a resource from that country.  Feel free to do this and post on the "make-up forum" available soon.
  • Yo necesito leer mis viejos forums
  • Yo escribo el charto pronto
  • unico problema
  • ayudan
  • yo vi que usaron el preterite(pasado tenso) como "se logro-was accomplished".
  • usted sito
  • son
  • son embarazado
  • Encuentré
  • en español: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXmHnpBgEqw.
  • muchísimas ejemplos
  • los verbos reflexivos, empieza immediatemente en diapositiva 2: “se usa para identificar afecctiones serias o mortales antes que lo síntomas aparezcan. Se puede empezar el tratamiento antes que la salud del bebé se perjudique por estas afecciones.”
  • Objeto Directo ejemplo, de diapositiva 4: “...el tratamiento puede salvarle o evitarle problemas....”
  • Objeto Indirecto ejemplo, de diapositiva 16: “...si no le practicaron pruebas preliminares de la audición a su bebé al nacer, asegúrarse de que le practiquen estas pruebas.”
  • Y Objecto Doble en diapositiva 22: “...y al recién nacido se les da de alta antes que el bebé....”
  • Ejemplos de vocabulario nuevo
  • Ahora estoy curiosa como se prueban los recién nacidos in otros países. Encuentro un sitio de Bolivia
  • No la encuentro la misma que Bolivia
  • la situación en Venezuela
  • me dijo
  • Hablé con mis vecinos, quienes son de El Salvador
  • Tuve que buscar
  • Completado
  • Completado
  • Completado
  • Completado las
  • decidí esperar
  • yo no realizo que “verb use” fue el verbos yo uso en “my post.”
  • haci
  • y haci vino
  • el nacio vajo
  • Escuchado
  • nombre de la operación
Justin Medved

The Answer Factory: Demand Media and the Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell Media... - 24 views

  • Pieces are not dreamed up by trained editors nor commissioned based on submitted questions. Instead they are assigned by an algorithm, which mines nearly a terabyte of search data, Internet traffic patterns, and keyword rates to determine what users want to know and how much advertisers will pay to appear next to the answers.
  • To appreciate the impact Demand is poised to have on the Web, imagine a classroom where one kid raises his hand after every question and screams out the answer. He may not be smart or even right, but he makes it difficult to hear anybody else.
  • But what Demand has realized is that the Internet gets only half of the simplest economic formula right: It has the supply part down but ignores demand. Give a million monkeys a million WordPress accounts and you still might never get a seven-point tutorial on how to keep wasps away from a swimming pool. Yet that’s what people want to know.
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  • That’s not to say there isn’t any room for humans in Demand’s process. They just aren’t worth very much. First, a crowdsourced team of freelance “title proofers” turn the algorithm’s often awkward or nonsensical phrases into something people will understand: “How to make a church-pew breakfast nook,” for example, becomes “How to make a breakfast nook out of a church pew.” Approved headlines get fed into a password-protected section of Demand’s Web site called Demand Studios, where any Demand freelancer can see what jobs are available. It’s the online equivalent of day laborers waiting in front of Home Depot. Writers can typically select 10 articles at a time; videographers can hoard 40. Nearly every freelancer scrambles to load their assignment queue with titles they can produce quickly and with the least amount of effort — because pay for individual stories is so lousy, only a high-speed, high-volume approach will work. The average writer earns $15 per article for pieces that top out at a few hundred words, and the average filmmaker about $20 per clip, paid weekly via PayPal. Demand also offers revenue sharing on some articles, though it can take months to reach even $15 in such payments. Other freelancers sign up for the chance to copyedit ($2.50 an article), fact-check ($1 an article), approve the quality of a film (25 to 50 cents a video), transcribe ($1 to $2 per video), or offer up their expertise to be quoted or filmed (free). Title proofers get 8 cents a headline. Coming soon: photographers and photo editors. So far, the company has paid out more than $17 million to Demand Studios workers; if the enterprise reaches Rosenblatt’s goal of producing 1 million pieces of content a month, the payouts could easily hit $200 million a year, less than a third of what The New York Times shells out in wages and benefits to produce its roughly 5,000 articles a month.
  • But once it was automated, every algorithm-generated piece of content produced 4.9 times the revenue of the human-created ideas. So Rosenblatt got rid of the editors. Suddenly, profit on each piece was 20 to 25 times what it had been. It turned out that gut instinct and experience were less effective at predicting what readers and viewers wanted — and worse for the company — than a formula.
  • Here is the thing that Rosenblatt has since discovered: Online content is not worth very much. This may be a truism, but Rosenblatt has the hard, mathematical proof. It’s right there in black and white, in the Demand Media database — the lifetime value of every story, algorithmically derived, and very, very small. Most media companies are trying hard to increase those numbers, to boost the value of their online content until it matches the amount of money it costs to produce. But Rosenblatt thinks they have it exactly backward. Instead of trying to raise the market value of online content to match the cost of producing it — perhaps an impossible proposition — the secret is to cut costs until they match the market value.
  •  
    This is facinating!!!
Keicha Kempsey

Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem - 26 views

  • Spear-Danes’
    • Keicha Kempsey
       
      The Spear-Danes are the Scyldings (Hrothgar's tribe)--central characters in Beowulf. They are variously referred to as Beorht-Dene (Bright-Danes), Éast-Dene (East-Danes), Gár-Dene (Spear-Danes), Hring-Dene (Ring-Danes), Norð-Dene (North-Danes), Súð-Dene (South-Danes), West Dene (West Danes), Scyldings (after their eponymous founder) and Ingwine (lit. 'friends of Ing [=OE. Frea / ON. Freyr ]')
  • Beowulf
    • Keicha Kempsey
       
      This is a different Beowulf from the eponymous hero of the poem. This is Béowulf Scyldinga or Béowulf the Dane, presumably equivalent to Beow(a) or Béaw of the geneaologies:-- the Parker MS of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has Beaw as the son of Scyld.
Clint Heitz

Which is better -- reading in print or on-screen? - 12 views

  • In a review of educational research published by SAGE Journals in July, Singer and University of Maryland professor Patricia Alexander discovered that readers may not comprehend complex or lengthy material as well when they view it digitally as when they read it on paper. While they concluded with a call for more research, the pair wrote, “It is fair to say that reading digitally is part and parcel of living and learning in the 21st century … No matter how complex the question of reading across mediums may be, teachers and students must understand how and when to employ a digital reading device.”
  • In an interview with “Inside Digital Learning,” Singer confirmed, “Digital devices aren’t going anywhere. This no longer is a question of, ‘Will the digital device be in your classroom?’ but ‘What do we know about the digital device, and how can we make this equal to print?’”
  • For example, she said instructors should take the time to show students how to annotate a PDF and make them aware that most people read more quickly on a screen than in print and therefore could lose some comprehension. She also suggested that teachers ask students to answer, in one sentence, what the overall point of the text was every time they read a chapter or an article online.
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  • “Sometimes students only need to get the main idea,” Singer said, “and then digital is just as good as print and a lot quicker … But if you want deep comprehension and synthesis of the material, have the students print it out and navigate the material that way. Think about what you want students to get out of a lesson” before assigning a printed or digital reading.
  • Donovan added, “I do agree that we’ve got to figure this out … because it isn’t going away, for sure, for lots of reasons: accessibility, cost, sustainability. We have to figure out how we can support students in comprehending from this format.”
  • But he said he believes “we can still get as much meaning out of digital text. We just haven’t found the right transitions to do what we actually do with a physical book, with digital text … We haven’t found the digital equivalent of interacting with text. We haven’t really trained people to do that.”
Jude Kesl

MAKE HOMEMADE SCIENCE TOYS AND PROJECTS - 12 views

  • You have found the non-commercial, teacher-created site for people who like to roll up their sleeves and make science toys and projects. You won't find slick, well-designed web pages here--more like the digital equivalent of a messy workshop. If you poke around though, you'll find good stuff. Science toy maker is a resource for inspired kids, parents, teachers, teenagers, home schoolers, science fair participants and citizen scientists everywhere.
  •  
    Nice examples of easy to make science toys. Hat tip to @Skipz
Adrienne Michetti

Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as "Third Places" - 52 views

    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      This is, I think, why I'm more keen on today's social networks than I am on games -- games do not provide deep emotional support.
  • "bowling alone" hypothesis (Putnam, 2000), which suggests that media are displacing crucial civic and social institutions
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      Putnam - need to check this article. Interesting; not sure I agree.
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  • According to Putnam, time spent with relatively passive and disengaging media has come at the expense of time spent on vital community-building activities.
  • The evidence to date is mixed
  • A core problem on both sides of the debate is an underlying assumption that all Internet use is more or less equivalent
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      SO True
  • It would be more plausible and empirically rigorous, then, to consider how specific forms of Internet activity impact civic and social engagement as a result of their particular underlying social architectures
  • combining conclusions from two different lines of MMO research conducted from two different perspectives—one from a media effects approach, the other from a sociocultural perspective on cognition and learning.
  • By providing spaces for social interaction and relationships beyond the workplace and home, MMOs have the capacity to function as one form of a new "third place" for informal sociability much like the pubs, coffee shops, and other hangouts of old.
  • loosely structured by open-ended narratives
  • They are known for their peculiar combination of designed "escapist fantasy" and emergent "social realism"
  • from two research projects: one an examination of the media effects of MMOs, the other an ethnographic study of cognition and culture in such contexts.
  • the conclusions of both studies were remarkably aligned.
  • the assumption that the most fruitful advances are sometimes made when congruent findings are discovered through disparate means
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      Love this quote.
  • demonstrate the "effects" of game play vs. no game play.
  • first project was a traditional effects study
  • second project, a qualitative study of cognition and learning in MMOs (
  • ethnography
  • sociocultural perspective
  • as a way to tease out what happens in the virtual setting of the game and how the people involved consider their own activities, the activities of others, and the contexts in which those activities takes place
  • a reasonable level of generalizability (random assignment to condition in the first study) and contextualization (ethnographic description of existing in-game social networks and practices in the second)
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      but I wonder why he chose these games -- this is not specified. Only their success in US and abroad?
  • brick-and-mortar "third places" in America where individuals can gather to socialize informally beyond the workplace and home
  • the exaggerated self-consciousness of individuals.
  • In what ways might MMOs function as new third places for informal sociability?
  • virtual environments have the potential to function as new (albeit digitally mediated) third places similar to pubs, coffee shops, and other hangouts.
  • in this section we analyze the structural form of MMOs that warrants this "third place" assertion.
  • eight defining characteristics of third places
  • there is no default obligation
  • To oblige any one person to play requires that explicit agreements be entered into by parties
  • the default assumption is that no one person is compelled to participate legally, financially, or otherwise.
  • Unless one transforms the virtual world of the game into a workplace (e.g., by taking on gainful employment as a virtual currency "farmer" for example, Dibbell, 2006; Steinkuehler, 2006a) or enters into such agreement, no one person is obligated to log in
    • Adrienne Michetti
       
      and this is why, in my opinion, you will never see games in school. The game cannot be the Third Place because school is a Second Place.
  • Yee's (2006) interviews also reveal that individuals who game with romantic partners or family find that such joint engagement in the "other world" of MMOs allows them to redefine the nature and boundaries of their offline relationships, often in more equitable terms than what may be possible in day-to-day offline life
  • the relationships that play-partners have with one another offline are often "leveled" within the online world
  • an individual's rank and status in the home, workplace, or society are of no importance
  • appeal to people in part because they represent meritocracies otherwise unavailable in a world often filled with unfairness
  • conversation plays an analogous role
  • "In all such systems, linguistic interactions have been primary: users exchange messages that cement the social bonds between them, messages that reflect shared history and understandings (or misunderstandings) about the always evolving local norms for these interactions" (p. 22).
  • third places must also be easy to access
  • such that "one may go alone at almost any time of the day or evening with assurance that acquaintances will be there"
  • accessible directly from one's home, making them even more accommodating to individual schedules and preferences
  • barriers to initial access.
  • "What attracts a regular visitor to a third place is supplied not by management but by the fellow customer,"
  • "It is the regulars who give the place its character and who assure that on any given visit some of the gang will be there"
  • affective sense
  • As one informant satirically commented in an interview, "You go for the experience [points], you stay for the enlightening conversation.
  • engendering a sense of reliable mentorship and community stability.
  • Oldenburg argues that third places are characteristically homely, their d�cor defying tidiness and pretension whenever possible. MMOs do not fit this criterion in any literal sense
  • In neither of our investigations did the degree of formality exhibited by players within the game bear any relation to the degree of visual ornamentation of the players' immediate vicinity.
  • Thus, while the visual form of MMO environments does not fit Oldenburg's (1999) criterion of "low profile," the social function of those environments does.
  • Oldenburg (1999) argues that seriousness is anathema to a vibrant third place; instead, frivolity, verbal word play, and wit are essential.
  • The playful nature of MMOs is perhaps most apparent in what happens when individuals do bring gravity to the game.
  • the home-like quality of third places in rooting people
  • Participation becomes a regular part of daily life for players and, among regular gamemates such as guild members, exceptional absences (i.e., prolonged or unforeseen ones) are queried within the game or outside i
  • create an atmosphere of mutual caring that, while avoiding entangling obligations per se, creates a sense of rootedness to the extent that regularities exist, irregularities are duly noted, and, when concerning the welfare of any one regular, checked into
  • Are virtual communities really communities, or is physical proximity necessary?
  • Anderson (1991), who suggests that geographic proximity itself is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for the emergence and preservation of "community."
  • Social capital (Coleman, 1988) works analogously to financial capital; it can be acquired and spent, but for social and personal gains rather than financial
  • operates cyclically within social networks because of their associated norms of reciprocity
  • bridging social capital is inclusive.
  • This form of social capital is marked by tentative relationships, yet what they lack in depth, they make up for in breadth.
  • On the one hand, bridging social capital provides little in the way of emotional support; on the other hand, such relationships can broaden social horizons or worldviews, providing access to information and new resources.
  • bonding social capital is exclusive.
  • social superglue.
  • it can also result in insularity.
  • shows that bridging and bonding social capital are tied to different social contexts, given the network of relationships they enable.
  • Virtual worlds appear to function best as bridging mechanisms rather than as bonding ones, although they do not entirely preclude social ties of the latter type.
  • One could argue that, if the benchmark for bonding social capital is the ability to acquire emotional, practical, or substantive support, then MMOs are not well set up for the task:
  • While deep affective relationships among players are possible, they are less likely to generate the same range of bonding benefits as real-world relationships because of players' geographic dispersion and the nature of third places themselves.
  • Despite differences in theoretical grounding and methodologies, our conclusions were remarkably similar across complementary macro- and micro-levels.
  • It is worth noting, however, that as gamers become more involved in long-term social networks such as guilds and their activities become more "hardcore" (e.g., marked by participation in large-scale collaborative problem-solving endeavors such as "raids" into difficult territories or castle sieges), the function of MMOs as "third places" begins to wane.
  • It may be, then, that the structure and function of MMOs as third places is one part of the "life cycle" for some gamers in a given title.
  • In such cases, MMOs appear to enable a different kind of sociability, one ostensibly recognizable as a "community" nonetheless.
  • However, our research findings indicate that this conclusion is uninformed. To argue that MMO game play is isolated and passive media consumption in place of informal social engagement is to ignore the nature of what participants actually do behind the computer screen
  • Perhaps it is not that contemporary media use has led to a decline in civic and social engagement, but rather that a decline in civic and social engagement has led to retribalization through contemporary media (McLuhan, 1964).
  • Such a view, however, ignores important nuances of what "community" means by pronouncing a given social group/place as either wholly "good" or "bad" without first specifying which functions the online community ought to fulfill.
  • Moreover, despite the semantics of the term, "weak" ties have been shown to be vital in communities, relationships, and opportunities.
  • is to what extent such environments shift the existing balance between bridging and bonding
  • In light of Putnam's evidence of the decline of crucial civic and social institutions, it may well be that the classification "lacking bridging social capital" best characterizes the everyday American citizen. T
  • Without bridging relationships, individuals remain sheltered from alternative viewpoints and cultures and largely ignorant of opportunities and information beyond their own closely bound social network.
  • it seems ironic that, now of all times, we would ignore one possible solution to our increasingly vexed relationship with diversity.
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