Note: The article is in English, although the page that shows the full article is written in Spanish. This article presents the idea that using screencasts and/or video lessons can help give students access to better instruction. The main idea of the paper is that to properly support students, one needs to be able to help answer questions in a timely fashion. As students study away from school, they tend to email questions to their instructors. I have noticed in recent years that emailed questions, although extremely relevant, can be unwieldy to explain via text. The article's text has the exact same conclusion (which is why it resonated with me the way it did) and makes the distinction that those same unwieldy or impractical 'text' solutions would be trivially answered if the student was face-to-face with the instructor. This concept, that face-to-face interaction is superior to all others, is the motivation for writing this paper. While screencasts and videos are not very interactive (for the most part), they are superior to simple written explanations (especially for complex or visual problems in science and math).

Our group's EQ relates to how ESOL and Special Education students perform on state tests in English. The article here is from Arizona and is a study in how well English Language Learners performed on their state mandated tests. The document outlines the issues that English learners have in their school along with teacher and district recommendations on how to help improve student scores.

The article shows how you can encourage student dialogue. In this study, the class was given a cartoon showing characters discussing a new or current class topic that has common misconceptions associated with it. After viewing the cartoon, students are asked to take sides and either defend or refute one of the characters' opinions about what they are expressing. This helps students focus on the topic because they are not reading an article or passage that is asking for feedback, but rather they are taking part in a sort of 'debate' amongst these characters. It is a starting point for a student centered lesson and helps the students feel more at ease in defending or arguing a point; they are talking about ideas that the 'cartoon character' has instead of an idea or concept that 'they' came up with.