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Limited influence in decision-making. In many high-achieving nations where teacher collaboration is the norm, teachers have substantial influence on school-based decisions, especially in the development of curriculum and assessment, and in the design of their own professional learning. In the United States, however, less than one-fourth of teachers feel they have great influence over school decisions and policies in seven different areas noted in the SASS surveys. A scant majority feel that they have some influence over curriculum and setting performance standards for students, though fewer than half perceived that they had some influence over the content of their in-service professional development. And very few felt they had influence over school policies and decisions affecting either teacher hiring and evaluation or the allocation of the school budget.

Limited influence in decision-making. In many high-achieving nations where teacher collaboration is the norm, teachers have substantial influence on school-based decisions, especially in the development of curriculum and assessment, and in the design of their own professional learning. In the United States, however, less than one-fourth of teachers feel they have great influence over school decisions and policies in seven different areas noted in the SASS surveys. A scant majority feel that they have some influence over curriculum and setting performance standards for students, though fewer than half perceived that they had some influence over the content of their in-service professional development. And very few felt they had influence over school policies and decisions affecting either teacher hiring and evaluation or the allocation of the school budget.

Limited influence in decision-making. In many high-achieving nations where teacher collaboration is the norm, teachers have substantial influence on school-based decisions, especially in the development of curriculum and assessment, and in the design of their own professional learning. In the United States, however, less than one-fourth of teachers feel they have great influence over school decisions and policies in seven different areas noted in the SASS surveys. A scant majority feel that they have some influence over curriculum and setting performance standards for students, though fewer than half perceived that they had some influence over the content of their in-service professional development. And very few felt they had influence over school policies and decisions affecting either teacher hiring and evaluation or the allocation of the school budget.

It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.

Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.

WPClipart is a collection of high-quality public domain images specifically tailored for use in word processors and optimized for printing on home/small office inkjet printers. There are thousands of color graphic clips as well as illustrations, photographs and black and white line art. Nearly all are in lossless, PNG format. As of Friday, 12/12/2008 there are 23,907 images.

The Firefox Extension for SnagIt is a convenient toolbar that you can add to your Firefox browser for easy access to the most popular screen capture and sharing options for Web page content.

According to a 2007 Pew/Internet study,1 49 percent of Americans only occasionally use information and communication technology. Of the remaining 51 percent, only 8 percent are what Pew calls omnivores, “deep users of the participatory Web and mobile applications.”

Shaping user behavior is a “soft” problem that has more to do with psychological and social barriers to technology adoption. Academia has its own cultural mores, which often conflict with experimenting with new ways of doing things. Gardner Campbell put it nicely last year when he wrote, “For an academic to risk ‘failure’ is often synonymous with ‘looking stupid in front of someone’.”2 The safe option for most users is to avoid trying something as risky as new technology.

The first instinct is thus to graft technology onto preexisting modes of behavior.