Group items tagged

Intriguing use of drawing to understand what one reads.

Fascinating must read on how "attention blindness" prevents us from seeing the bigger world and how unstructured charges to students on finding academic uses of iPods they had been given as Duke first year students led to interconnected learning, innovation, etc. Excerpt: But it got me thinking: What if bad writing is a product of the form of writing required in college-the term paper-and not necessarily intrinsic to a student's natural writing style or thought process? I hadn't thought of that until I read my students' lengthy, weekly blogs and saw the difference in quality. If students are trying to figure out what kind of writing we want in order to get a good grade, communication is secondary. What if "research paper" is a category that invites, even requires, linguistic and syntactic gobbledygook? Research indicates that, at every age level, people take their writing more seriously when it will be evaluated by peers than when it is to be judged by teachers. Online blogs directed at peers exhibit fewer typographical and factual errors, less plagiarism, and generally better, more elegant and persuasive prose than classroom assignments by the same writers. Longitudinal studies of student writers conducted by Stanford University's Andrea Lunsford, a professor of English, assessed student writing at Stanford year after year. Lunsford surprised everyone with her findings that students were becoming more literate, rhetorically dexterous, and fluent-not less, as many feared. The Internet, she discovered, had allowed them to develop their writing.

Miami Dade, which has more than 90,000 students, for example, decided to require those who place into developmental courses to take a "success" course that teaches basic study and time-management skills. That requirement helped to double graduation rates for the college's minority students. Valencia, seeing data that students who added classes late had poor completion rates, instituted a policy barring students from registering for classes that have already met. To maintain some flexi­bility, the college introduced "flex start" sections, which begin a month into the semester. Another excerpt: Faculty-Led Efforts Faculty buy-in is another crucial component to colleges' meeting their completion goals. Finalists for the Aspen Prize all had faculty members strongly dedicated to teaching-and conducting research on teaching methods. "What we heard a lot from faculty was, 'How can I find better ways to deliver instruction to my students?'" Mr. Wyner says. As part of the tenure process at Valencia, full-time faculty develop three-year "action research projects" on teaching techniques that involve training courses, advisers, and peer-review panels. The faculty members test teaching strategies, assessing students' performance against that of control groups. Ideas that work find a place in the classroom. In one project, a professor tried giving individual lab assignments to developmental-reading students, rather than a blanket assignment for all students. The new method worked better, the professor determined, and all sections of that course on Valencia's East Campus now use that model of instruction. Valencia is not the only college where faculty drive the innovation. At Miami Dade, faculty members banded together to improve students' pass rates in math, choosing and testing several new teaching methods. Some showed promise, such as testing algebra students more often on smaller amounts of material, a practice that continued.

NAEP administers assessments in the areas of mathematics, reading, science, writing, the arts, civics, economics, geography, and U.S. history. These assessments are conducted periodically and adhere to a uniform approach using the same set of test booklets across the nation. This site represents the different components of the NAEP assessment. Another website, The Nation's Report Card (nationsreportcard.gov), publishes the results of the assessments.

By David T. Conley, published in Office of Community College Research and Leadership (OCCRL) - Illinois, Update Newsletter, spring 2009, 20(2). This article was one of the assigned readings for MCNC's Principals and Directors meeting, Feb 2010.

By Daniel T. Willingham, in American Educator, spring 2009, pp 4-13. Excerpted from his book, Why Don't Students Like School, published by John Wiley & Sons, 2009. This article was one of the assigned readings for MCNC's Principals and Directors meeting, Feb 2010.

Constructing a Discourse of Inquiry: Findings from a Five-year Ethnography at One Elementary School research article by Louise Jennings and Heidi Mills, 2009. Very interesting study for what they are studying and where they are studying it--SC! Resembles our SLI work; need to read the study in full.

Great presentation on how to use Adobe Connect for synchronous learning by K-8 students and Encarde, a way to communicate with students and parents and keep them responding to deadlines on projects without using email, that most people read late or not at all. This virtual model could also work for SLI.

College Board ACCUPLACER tests provide students with useful information about academic skills in math, English, and reading. Resource for students from The College Board

Schools are using Accuplacer as early as 9th grade to better prepare their students for meaningful high school work that will get them ready for college.

Absolutely fabulous video (6 minutes) on Connected Learning and how we must change the outcomes based focus of education to awaken the curiosity of each learner and engage with them in learning how to learn given the distribution of resources, ideas, experts, etc. while preserving the learners' autonomy, access to diversity, openness to others for learning, interactivity with similar and diverse co-learners, etc. Film by Nic Askew at Soulbiographies.com interviewing McArthur Foundation person and two professors of education

The Alice Project--a 10th grade honors English tour of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with students reading the Annotated Alice and publishing their questions and reflections in real-time online.

Alexander Russo's This Week in Education, June 22, 2011 chart on College Haves and Have-Nots with great graphics showing the people-side of the data.

From the home page, "Welcome to the knowledge and learning community committed to college completion, where you can share and collaborate across stakeholders, learn about innovative projects, and read current college completion news."