Middle College National Consortium

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

Interview with MIT's provost L. Rafael Reif and Anant Agarwal, director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory by Jeffrey R. Young, Wired Campus, Chronicle of HE, February 6, 2012. Like the idea of "karma points" mentioned below because it suggests something less than a formalized badges system (easy to implement), and gives high school students an understanding of altruistic behaviors that get some light and fun recognition, and new terminology. Excerpt: "Q. You refer to what's being given by MITx as a certificate. But there's also this trend of educational badges, such as an effort by Mozilla, the people who make the Firefox Web browser, to build a framework to issue such badges. Is MIT planning to use that badge platform to offer these certificates? Mr. Agarwal: There are a lot of experiments around the Web as far as various ways of badging and various ways of giving points. Some sites call them "karma points." Khan Academy has a way of giving badges to students who offer various levels of answering questions and things like that. Clearly this is a movement that is happening in our whole business. And we clearly want to leverage some of these ideas. But fundamentally at the end of the day we have to give a certificate with a grade that says the student took this course and here's how they did-here's their grade and we will give it to them. … But there are many, many ways the Internet is evolving to include some kind of badging and point systems, so we will certainly try to leverage these things. And that's a work in progress."

Isn't this what MCHS and ECHS do with their students to ensure college readiness and success? Excerpt: "Some institutions do require students to participate in specific programs-and they've seen positive results. For instance, Brazosport College, in Lake Jackson, Tex., began to require first-time students to take a student-success course in 2007. It teaches time-management skills and proper study habits. As a result, the fall-to-spring retention rate for students who completed the course jumped to 89 percent, compared with the baseline rate of 66 percent. Those students passed remedial courses at a higher rate than before, and as a result were more likely to stay enrolled in college, the report says."

Great ideas for using simple questions to prompt interaction on the Youth Voices Page or other Facebook group pages

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.

CRAP Test questions for distinguishing between legitimate and less-than-legitimate information C--Currency R--Reliability A--Authority P--Purpose/Point of view

Article by Rob Jenkins, August 16, 2011 on Improving Online Success for beginning college students. See excerpt below. Makes me think about how MCNC's SLI work has introduced? equipped? advanced? students' and teachers' online working skills, especially the push to use social media. And how all MCHSs and ECHSs should attend to this skill development for their students.

"In fact, one of the benefits of the assessment movement is that rigorous analysis of data about student engagement and learning is showing precisely what works and what doesn't. For example, data from the National Survey of Student Engagement have led to the identification of 10 "high-impact practices" that demonstrably increase student engagement, retention, and graduation rates. They are: first-year seminars and experiences; common intellectual experiences; learning communities; writing-intensive courses; collaborative assignments and projects; undergraduate research; diversity/global learning; service and community-based learning; internships; and capstone courses and projects."

Preview of Google PLus's value to HE Excerpt: "Facebook does allow some selective sharing, but doing so is difficult to master. As a result, many professors have decided to reserve Facebook for personal communications rather than use it for teaching and research. "I don't friend my students, because the ability to share is so clunky on Facebook," says Jeremy Littau, an assistant professor of journalism at Lehigh University. "This gives us ways to connect with people that we can't do on Facebook." In Google Plus, users can assign each new contact to a "circle" and can create as many circles as they like. Each time they post an update, they can easily select which circles get to see it. B.J. Fogg, director of Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab and a consulting faculty member for computer science, says he plans to use Google Plus to collaborate on research projects: "Probably every project in my lab will have its own circle." Mr. Littau is even more enthusiastic. He posted an item to his blog on Thursday titled: "Why Lehigh (and every other) University needs to be on GPlus. Now." "I want to start using this in my class next term," he says, adding that he aims to expose his students to the latest communication technologies in all of his classes. He plans to try the video-chat feature of Google Plus, called "hangouts," to hold office hours online. The new system allows up to 10 people to join in a video chat. Mr. Littau may also hold optional review sessions for exams using the technology. "I can host chats a few nights a week," he says."

Facebook usage in academic work is going up! Excerpt: "The idea of students wanting professors to integrate more technology use into the classroom was a common takeaway from the survey. After e-mail, learning-management systems and e-textbooks were the two technologies that students wanted instructors to use more frequently, according to the survey. Learning-management systems are used by 73 percent of students, and e-books or e-textbooks by 57 percent."

Excellent justification for why teachers need to write themselves if they want their students to be better writers and how blogging is a great medium for the writing journey. November 26, 2011, Langwitches Blog

"Communities of practice are bridges between the work being done and the diversity of social networks." Hypothesis: If you agree with this statement, facilitation is the means to building the bridge between work and learning that most organizations cannot do without outside support.

very good blog on June 5, 2011 by K. Walsh on 7 reasons why instructional uses of social networking software can create opportunities for learning, connecting, and engagement

Slideshare net presentation on Social Media Explained Visually, a 2 minute look at how social media enables people to create, share, discuss, repurpose, ...

A rubber ducky personal learning network--could this be a model for a personal reflection--knowledge building exercise for IL teachers, students?

Documentary highlighting the success of three high-performing charter schools in the Boston area.

Professional Development services aimed at addressing K-12 educational challenges. Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert J. Marzano and Douglas Reeves are a few of the top speakers.

Twitter feed of Lucian Duma, teacher, researcher and social media curator based in Caransebes, Romania . website: http://luciandumateachweb20.eu/

By Richard DuFour, published in Educational Leadership, May 2004, V. 61, N. 8, p 6-11. Educational Leadership is a publication of ASCD. Author discusses the concepts of Professional Learning Communities, the ideas behind their core principles and how the principles guide schools' efforts to sustain the professional learning community model until it becomes inherent in a school's culture.

A network of professionals from non-profit and campus-based college prep programs, university admissions and financial aid offices, and the School District of Philadelphia. The aim of this group is to increase the number of Philadelphia high school students who are college-ready, matriculate and graduate from post-secondary institutions.