The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives.
New project by the Library of Congress that has organized and made available its audio archives, including famous speeches and music from our culture. Great primary sources for all to use.
Online economics students do not absorb much material from homework and chapter tests during the semester—perhaps because they expect to be able to cheat their way through the final exam.
she has noticed that her online students perform much worse than their classroom-taught counterparts when they are required to take a proctored, closed-book exam at the end of the semester.
Ms. Wachenheim’s findings parallel those of a 2008 study in the Journal of Economic Education. That study found indirect evidence that students cheat on unproctored online tests, because their performance on proctored exams was much more consistent with predictions based on their class ranks and their overall grade-point averages.
Those include insisting on a proctored final exam and reminding students of that exam “early, often, and broadly, so students are ever-conscious that they will be responsible for the material in an unaided environment.”
"In self-paced courses, many students appeared to cram most of the homework and chapter exams into the final week of the semester. Few of them bothered to do the ungraded practice problems offered by the online publisher."
First, where is the teaching? It sounds more like a case of poorly designed instruction...or a complete lack of instruction. Of course these students are not learning...they are not being taught.
Also, if they are in classes which are actively taught by a teacher, then where are the formative assessments by the instructors? That teacher should know long before the final exam if the students know the material or not. A good teacher and a well developed online course would have a number of ways to determine this which do not allow for "cut and paste" or cheating.
Finally, does this department test a student's memorization of material or the mastery of the concepts and and understanding of how to apply those concepts? Perhaps, there is also a need to reevaluate the assessments.
Good teaching is good teaching. If a student is not learning the material, who is really to blame?
What I can say is that the MBSR program has been
around for 30 years and there have been hundreds of clinical trials indicating that
it is effective for reducing stress and many (though not all) clinical symptoms.
All the participants in our study went through the
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
course (MBSR) developed at the Center for Mindfulness
I can't stop thinking/my mind won't calm down/"Unusual phenomena" bother me when I meditate/I can't meditate—what should I do?
OR
When I meditate, I experience "unusual phenomena". What is going on? Is this
an advanced state?
The Buddha compared the mind to the strings of a lute (a guitar-like instrument): the
lute can not be played if the strings are too tight or too loose. Similarly when attention
is either too tight or too loose, you can't properly meditate. When attention is too loose,
the mind wanders and you get lost in thought. Try narrowing your focus in different ways
(e.g. just inhales instead of the whole breath, focus on a smaller area around your nose).
Some people do a few minutes of yoga or loving kindness (metta) practice at the start of
their meditation period to focus the mind, before switching to breath awareness meditation.
Some people find focusing on sounds easier than focusing on breathing.
The goal is not to try to change anything, but to be aware of the desire to change it and then see if we can just relax and be ok with it even if it doesn't change. Are we trying to quiet the storm, or are we trying to find peace within the storm?
Get passed it. This isn't an elementary school conversation and we don't know the context before the question was asked. Let's not forget that reporters provoke to get the sound bite.
But it's a little muddy now because Matt was rude. And we applauded.
Where were all the other educators at the Save Our Schools March? I am guilty, and feel guilty for having not attended, but really, where were we all?
No, Matt Damon isn't, and shouldn't be our poster child for education reform. You cannot fault him for representing us and using a naughty word. Instead of poo-pooing Matt, I applaud his courage to do so, to tell it like it is, and for defending our profession. I will not put him on a pedestal as if he speaks for me as one of my own, however, he did defended teachers. I appreciate that, a lot.
Don't make this more than what it is, even if you think he did it in a shitty way.
many brilliant, talented young people are dropping out of high school because they see high school as implicilty "college prep" and they cannot imagine anything more dreary than spending four more years bored in a classroom when they could be out actually experiencing and perfecting their skills in the trades, the skills, and the careers that inspire them.
The abolishing of art, music, physical education, tech training, and shop from grade schools and high schools means that the requirement for excellence has shrunk more and more right at the time when creativity, imagination, dexterity, adaptability to change, technical know-how, and all the rest require more not less diversity.
we make education hell for so many kids, we undermine their skills and their knowledge, we underscore their resentment, we emphasize class division and hierarchy, and we shortchange their future and ours,
There are so many viable and important and skilled professions that cannot be outsourced to either an exploitative Third World sweat shop or to a computer, that require face-to-face presence, and a bucketload of skills--but that do not require a college education: the full range of IT workers, web designers, body workers (ie deep tissue massage), yoga and pilates instructors, fitness educators, DJ's, hair dressers, retail workers, food industry professionals, entertainers, entertainment industry professionals, construction workers, dancers, artists, musicians, entrepreneurs, landscapers, nanny's, elder-care professionals, nurses's aids, dog trainers, cosmetologists, athletes, sales people, fashion designers, novelists, poets, furniture makers, book keepers, sound engineers, inn keepers, wedding planners, stylists, photographers, auto mechanics, and on and on.
In general, I agree. However, novelists and poets don't need college?? And perhaps less so to artists and musicians? Perhaps... but what better way to learn the history and analysis of their Art, in order to place their own work in context?
I could not agree more with you Maureen. As a long time middle school teacher in Oakland and Mpls I am thoroughly convinced that our nation and our states are nuts to have cut all of the tech and arts classes out of elementary, middle and high schools. EVERY student should learn a trade/skill set in high school. The hs drop out rate is horrifying and no surprise that the crime rate follows. We have a nation of under achieving teens because the adults have not kept up with funding the myriad of opportunities that would capture and harness their interests and creativity. I look forward to reading your book Maureen and to following you on here.
The kind of product I shall pick on here has the form of a game: the player
gets into situations that require an appropriate action in order to get on to
the next situation along the road to the final goal. So far, this sounds like
"tainment." The "edu" part comes from the fact that the actions are schoolish
exercises such as those little addition or multiplication sums that schools are
so fond of boring kids with. It is clear enough why people do this. Many who
want to control children (for example, the less imaginative members of the
teaching profession or parents obsessed with kids' grades) become green with
envy when they see the energy children pour into computer games. So they say to
themselves, "The kids like to play games, we want them to learn multiplication
tables, so everyone will be happy if we make games that teach multiplication."
The result is shown in a rash of ads that go like this: "Our Software Is So Much
Fun That The Kids Don't Even Know That They Are Learning" or "Our Games Make
Math Easy."
What is worst about school curriculum is the fragmentation of knowledge into
little pieces. This is supposed to make learning easy, but often ends up
depriving knowledge of personal meaning and making it boring. Ask a few kids:
the reason most don't like school is not that the work is too hard, but that it
is utterly boring.
game designers have a better take on the nature of learning than curriculum
designers. They have to. Their livelihoods depend on millions of people being
prepared to undertake the serious amount of learning needed to master a complex
game. If their public failed to learn, they would go out of business. In the
case of curriculum designers, the situation is reversed: their business is
boosted whenever students fail to learn and schools clamor for a new curriculum!
watching kids work at mastering games confirms what I know from my own
experience: learning is essentially hard; it happens best when one is deeply
engaged in hard and challenging activities.
The preoccupation in America with "Making It Easy" is self-defeating and cause
for serious worry about the deterioration of the learning environment.
I have found that when they get the support and have access to suitable software
systems, children's enthusiasm for playing games easily gives rise to an
enthusiasm for making them, and this in turn leads to more sophisticated
thinking about all aspects of games, including those aspects that we are
discussing here. Of course, the games they can make generally lack the polish
and the complexity of those made by professional designers. But the idea that
children should draw, write stories and play music is not contradicted by the
fact that their work is not of professional quality. I would predict that within
a decade, making a computer game will be as much a part of children's culture as
any of these art forms.
Yes, group activity can provide the impetus for better framing of problems, which can lead to original solutions. But creativity is the "end result of many forms of intelligence coming together, and intelligence born out of collaboration and out of networks," to quote one of my co-workers, Robert Fabricant. When we collaborate with different kinds of thinkers, sometimes from different cultures and backgrounds, we individually struggle with ingrained behaviors that reduce our likelihood of manifesting creativity.
Instead of holding an hour-long meeting with a facilitator at the whiteboard, pen poised to capture ideas called out, what would happen if every person in the room were provided five minutes to generate ideas individually?
When we lose track of time in group discussion, we are often crafting an enjoyable group experience at the cost of surfacing everyone's unique perspectives and voices. We risk filling the time with consensus, rather than exploring divergent, multi-disciplinary viewpoints. It is in the friction between these views that we explore new patterns of thought.
this kind of teamwork requires knowing when not to work in teams. This sounds obvious, but we constantly struggle with the belief that we must be inclusive to succeed. When to diverge and when to converge: that is the question.
A useful tool to combat open-ended group dialogue is "timeboxing," the use of short, structured sprints to reach stated goals for individuals or teams.
Feed readers
are probably the most important digital tool for today's learner because they
make sifting through the amazing amount of content added to the Internet
easy. Also known as aggregators, feed readers are free tools that can
automatically check nearly any website for new content dozens of times a
day---saving ridiculous amounts of time and customizing learning experiences for
anyone.
Imagine
never having to go hunting for new information from your favorite sources
again. Learning goes from a frustrating search through thousands of
marginal links written by questionable characters to quickly browsing the
thoughts of writers that you trust, respect and enjoy.
Feed readers can
quickly and easily support blogging in the classroom, allowing teachers to
provide students with ready access to age-appropriate sites of interest that are
connected to the curriculum. By collecting sites in advance and organizing
them with a feed reader, teachers can make accessing information manageable for
their students.
Here are several
examples of feed readers in action:
Used specifically as
a part of one classroom project, this feed list contains information related to
global warming that students can use as a starting point for individual
research.
While there are literally dozens of different feed reader
programs to choose from (Bloglines andGoogle Reader are two
biggies), Pageflakes is a favorite of
many educators because it has a visual layout that is easy to read and
interesting to look at. It is also free and web-based. That
means that users can check accounts from any computer with an Internet
connection. Finally, Pageflakes makes it quick and easy to add new
websites to a growing feed list—and to get rid of any websites that users are no
longer interested in.
What's even
better: Pageflakes has been developinga teacher version of their tooljust for us that includes an online grade tracker,
a task list and a built in writing tutor. As Pageflakes works to perfect
its teacher product, this might become one of the first kid-friendly feed
readers on the market. Teacher Pageflakes users can actually blog and create a
discussion forum directly in their feed reader---making an all-in-one digital
home for students.
For more
information about the teacher version of Pageflakes, check out this
review:
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
Create a box demonstrating what you know about any subject. Incorporate text, images, video or audio. Great for describing an artist, author, character, location...
Create a box demonstrating what you know about any subject. Incorporate text, images, video or audio. Great for describing an artist, author, character, location...
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
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."
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!
Every day that first week, even in the first meeting, teach something substantive in the curriculum. Make it something that is brand new, not something reviewed from the previous year. Students are hungry for intellectual engagement after a summer off, and they want to think great thoughts and do great works.
Mix academics with administrative and Get-to-Know-You activities. It should be about 50-50: half engagement with interesting academics, half focused on forms, announcements, or activities meant to build classroom community. Keep the ratio: students will grow impatient and disillusioned if too much time is spent on get-to-know-you activities. It sounds weird, but most students are not looking for continued summer camp experiences so much as they are seeking confidence and engagement.
choose poems related to growing up or modern culture, or read share the lyrics of powerful songs of any generation.
It's too bad that these are "read" by a computer, at least the one example I listened to of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow certainly sounded that way. It was actually difficult to understand at times because the natural flow of language was well, not natural. Might be better if you are reading along while listening.
there’s a war raging over what some now are calling a new art form in the emerging Web 2.0 culture—remix
remix is collage, a recombination of existing, reference images or music and video clips from popular digital culture, elements of which are mashed up into something new.
If digital literacy includes remixing, then the skills of citation and attribution are more important than ever.
failing to legally protect remixes as original forms of art and expression “will make pirates of our children...We cannot kill this form of expression;
Johnson, author of The Invention of Air, a new book about the history of information flows in American and British society, said remix has “deep roots in the Age of Enlightenment and among America’s Founding Fathers.”
Remix is not new... but it is easier and more accessible than ever. A smartphone alone is a remix machine capable of remixing text, audio, video, images and more. Then with a click you can publish your remix to the world from anywhere!
Where do we think innovation and creativity come from
Fairey rounded out the talk, citing remix as one of the early 21st century’s most popular forms of free political expression.
Remix is all about making references; references are how you establish a point of view in popular culture, and they are crucial to my work as an artist.”
This is what we as educators are all about...
We challenge students to make connections, identify themes, clarify or argue a point of view. We push them to remix everyday.
Are we challenging them to respect the ideas they build their learning upon?
Great teachers tend to be good-natured and approachable, as opposed to sour or foreboding; professional without being aloof; funny (even if they’re not stand-up comedians), perhaps because they don’t take themselves or their subject matter too seriously; demanding without being unkind; comfortable in their own skin (without being in love with the sound of their own voices); natural (they make teaching look easy even though we all know it isn’t); and tremendously creative, and always willing to entertain new ideas or try new things, sometimes even on the fly.
Passion. Of all the qualities that characterize great teachers, this is the most important, by far.
Don’t think, by the way, that students don’t pick up on the disdain. They absolutely do. And my experience with evaluating faculty members over the years suggests that the teachers who are most widely disliked are the ones who most dislike students.
Rich Robles on 11 May 11The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives.
Steve Ransom on 11 May 11New project by the Library of Congress that has organized and made available its audio archives, including famous speeches and music from our culture. Great primary sources for all to use.
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