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paper vs screen in your brain

The Birthday Party by Katherine Brush     They were a couple in their late thirties, and they looked unmistakably married. They sat on the banquette opposite us in a little narrow restaurant, having dinner. The man had a round, self-satisfied face, with glasses on it; the woman was fadingly pretty, in a big hat. There was nothing conspicuous about them, nothing particularly noticeable, until the end of their meal, when it suddenly became obvious that this was an occasion-in fact, the husband's birthday. And the wife had planned a little surprise for him.     It arrived, in the form of a small but glossy birthday cake, with one pink candle burning in the center. The headwaiter brought it in and placed it before the husband, and meanwhile the violin-and-piano orchestra played "Happy Birthday to You" and the wife beamed with shy pride over her little surprise, and such few people as there were in the restaurant tried to help out with a pattering of applause. It became clear at once that help was needed, because the husband was not pleased. Instead he was hotly embarrassed, and indignant at his wife for embarrassing him.     You looked at him and you saw this and you thought, "Oh, now don't be like that!" But he was like that, and as soon as the little cake had been deposited on the table, and the orchestra had finished the birthday piece, and the general attention had shifted from the man and the woman, I saw him say something to her under his breath-some punishing thing, quick and curt and unkind. I couldn't bear to look at the woman then, so I stared at my plate and waited for quite a long time. Not long enough, though. She was still crying when I finally glanced over there again. Crying quietly and heartbrokenly and hopelessly, all to herself, under the gay big brim of her best hat.  

From Mark Rounds: Web-Ed Tools Paper.li: "The art of online storytelling is all about presentation. As a non-linear storytelling engine, Projeqt gives creatives the ability to weave together stories dripping with style and personality from Flickr photos, RSS feeds, tweets, YouTube or Vimeo videos, and any media stored on their own computers.Users can craft "projeqts," whatever their purpose may be, by adding content in the form of slides. Create a slide, name it, add tags, and fill the slide with a photo, text, video or feed. Slides are published to create the web story and be can reordered via drag and drop. Users can also create a projeqt within a projeqt to serve as a story inside a story.In private beta right now... It took me a week to get my invite."

For the high-schoolers reading To Kill a Mockingbird today, America is a very different place than it was when Lee wrote her novel 50 years ago. Lee's story of Scout Finch and her father, Atticus - a small-town Southern lawyer who defends a black man unjustly accused of rape - came out just as the nation was fighting over school desegregation. To Kill a Mockingbird didn't change everyone's mind, but it did open some. And it made an impression on many young people who, like Scout, were trying to get a grip on right and wrong in a world that is not always fair.

Don't comment on everything. Tell students that in your responses to a particular paper you intend to focus on their thesis sentences and introductions, or their overall structure, or their use of sources, etc. This method works particularly well in courses that require students to do several papers. Instructors can, as the term progresses, focus on different aspects of student writing. Space or stagger deadlines so that you are not overwhelmed by drafts. If the thought of grading eighteen essays in two or three days is daunting, divide the class in half or into thirds and require different due dates for different groups. Use peer groups. Ask students to meet outside of class (or virtually, on the Blackboard discussion board) to talk with one another about their papers. Peer groups work best when you've modeled the critiquing process in class, and when you provide students with models or guidelines for critiquing. See our page on Collaborative Learning for a fuller discussion. Ask for a Writing Assistant. The Writing Assistant reviews drafts of papers and makes extensive comments. Students benefit by having an additional reader; instructors benefit because they get better papers. If you'd like more information about using a Writing Assistant in your course, contact Stephanie Boone, Director of Student Writing Support.

Who the Millennials are, and how Gen-X English teachers might best work with them

Discourse communitySwales (1990) found that a discourse communityhas a broadly agreed set of common public goalshas mechanisms of intercommunication among its membersuses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedbackutilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative utterance of its aimshas acquired some specific lexis (specialized terminology, acronyms)has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.  

"Learning Strategies Learning strategies refer to methods that students use to learn. This ranges from techniques for improved memory to better studying or test-taking strategies. For example, the method of loci is a classic memory improvement technique; it involves making associations between facts to be remembered and particular locations. In order to remember something, you simply visualize places and the associated facts. Some learning strategies involve changes to the design of instruction. For example, the use of questions before, during or after instruction has been shown to increase the degree of learning (see Ausubel). Methods that attempt to increase the degree of learning that occurs have been called "mathemagenic" (Ropthkopf, 1970). A typical study skill program is SQ3R which suggests 5 steps: (1) survey the material to be learned, (2) develop questions about the material, (3) read the material, (4) recall the key ideas, and (5) review the material. Research on metacognition may be relevant to the study of learning strategies in so far as they are both concerned with control processes. A number of learning theories emphasize the importance of learning strategies including: double loop learning ( Argyris ), conversation theory (Pask), and lateral thinking ( DeBono ). Weinstein (1991) discusses learning strategies in the context of social interaction, an important aspect of Situated Learning Theory. References: H.F. O'Neil (1978). Learning strategies. New York: Academic Press. H.F. O'Neil & C. Spielberger (1979). Cognitive and Affective Learning Strategies. New York: Academic Press. Rothkopf, E. (1970). The concept of mathemagenic behavior. Review of Educational Research, 40, 325-336. Schmeck, R.R. (1986). Learning Styles and Learning Strategies. NY: Plenum. Weinstein, C.E., Goetz, E.T., & Alexander, P.A. (1986). Learning and Study Strategies. NY: Academic Press. Weinstein, C.S. (1991). The classroom as a social context for learning. Annual Revi

AwesomeStories is a gathering place of primary-source information. Its purpose - since the site was first launched in 1999 - is to help educators and individuals find original sources, located at national archives, libraries, universities, museums, historical societies and government-created web sites. Sources held in archives, which document so much important first-hand information, are often not searchable by popular search engines. One needs to search within those institutional sites directly, using specific search phrases not readily discernible to non-scholars. The experience can be frustrating, resulting in researchers leaving key sites without finding needed information. AwesomeStories is about primary sources. The stories exist as a way to place original materials in context and to hold those links together in an interesting, cohesive way (thereby encouraging people to look at them). It is a totally different kind of web site in that its purpose is to place primary sources at the forefront - not the opinions of a writer. Its objective is to take the site's users to places where those primary sources are located. The author of each story is listed on the preface page of the story. A link to the author provides more detailed information. This educational teaching/learning tool is also designed to support state and national standards. Each story on the site links to online primary-source materials which are positioned in context to enhance reading comprehension, understanding and enjoyment.

"Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language brings together historical and contemporary works of art that treat language not merely as a system of communication governed by grammatical rules and assigned meanings, but as a material that can be manipulated with creative freedom, like paint, clay, or any other artistic medium. The exhibition is divided into two sections. The first is a historical overview of 20th-century art that experiments with the graphic, sonic, and kinetic possibilities of letters and words. With a few notable exceptions, these works are confined to the two-dimensional parameters of a page. The second section presents an installation of contemporary works, most of which do away with the page; some do away with writing altogether. The artist and poet Emmett Williams observed that "the poem as picture is as old as the hills," citing its beginnings in hieroglyphics,"

"At its foundation, To Kill A Mockingbird is not the most morally complex of works, it is true. But then again, it is a novel written for children, and when it was composed, in the late 1950s, and published, in July, 1960, the proposition that black people ought to be treated as equal citizens was still a radical one in America. If Lee makes it clear to her audience where she believes our sympathies ought to lie - with Tom Robinson, the man falsely accused of rape, whose conviction is assured by a racist judicial system, and with Mayella Ewell, the impoverished incest victim who is forced to falsely accuse him by her abusive alcoholic father - then it is perhaps because at the dawn of the 1960s, the civil rights movement had yet to realize many of its most important victories, and the second-wave women's movement was barely even beginning."

Jane Austen's fiction manuscripts are the first significant body of holograph evidence surviving for any British novelist. They represent every stage of her writing career and a variety of physical states: working drafts, fair copies, and handwritten publications for private circulation. Digitization enables their virtual reunification and will provides scholars with the first opportunity to make simultaneous ocular comparison of their different physical and conceptual states; it will facilitate intimate and systematic study of Austen's working practices across her career, a remarkably neglected area of scholarship within the huge, world-wide Austen critical industry. Many of the Austen manuscripts are frail; open and sustained access has long been impossible for conservation and location reasons. Digitization at this stage in their lives not only offers the opportunity for the virtual reunification of a key manuscript resource, it will also be accompanied by a record in as complete a form as possible of the conservation history and current material state of these manuscripts to assist their future conservation.

"What is good writing? Ask an English teacher, and they'll tell you good writing is grammatically correct. They'll tell you it makes a point and supports it with evidence. Maybe, if they're really honest, they'll admit it has a scholarly tone - prose that sounds like Jane Austen earns an A, while a paper that could've been written by Willie Nelson scores a B (or worse). Not all English teachers abide by this system, but the vast majority do. Just look at the writing of most graduates, and you'll see what I mean. It's proper, polite, and just polished enough not to embarrass anyone. Mission accomplished, as far as our schools are concerned. But let me ask you something: Is that really good writing?"

About LearnCentral LearnCentral is a new social learning network for education, sponsored by Elluminate. More than a social network or a learning community, this free, open environment represents the next logical step of combining asynchronous social networking and the ability to store, organize, and find educational resources with the live, online meeting and collaboration provided by Elluminate technology. Not just for Elluminate customers, LearnCentral is for any educator who is passionate about teaching and learning and wants to find and connect with like-minded colleagues to share content, develop best practices, and collaborate on a global level. While still in its early stages, LearnCentral has the potential to make a significant historical difference in how educators work together for professional development in their own careers.

Annually, the American Diversity Project poses a theme to be interpreted by a select group of visionaries. Their interpretations and creative work provide a view of contemporary issues in American society. The project culminates in a gathering of the participants in a region related to the given theme.

What if every student (and educator) was a good online researcher?  I know, you don't have the time to teach information fluency skills.  What if you could get a significant advance is skills with just a 2 -3  hour time commitment?  Here's a great Prezi 'fly by" of the new Information Investigator 3.1 online self paced class.  Watch the presentation carefully to find the link to a free code to take the class for evaluation purposes. 

Create historical twitter character then tweet based on history research  Quote from Mark Rounds Web-Ed Tools Paper.li, "Participants choose a historical event, create Twitter accounts for individual characters, pore over primary source documents and think critically about the times, dates, and durations of events to create hundreds of Tweets as they might have been broadcast had Twitter existed before the 21st century. They then submit all those Tweets to the engineers at TwHistory, specifying a start date for their event, and then watch it unfold - over a day, a week, a month or more - reflecting the event's actual duration."