Middle College National Consortium

Douglas A. Guiffrida writes about Theories of Human Development That Enhance an Understanding of the College Transition Process, 2009. Could have implications for SLI curriculum development. "To encourage the moratorium that Erikson believed is necessary for establishing secure identities, colleges need to provide academic curricula that encourage students to think about the issues most important to their identity development, which can include in-depth study of diverse religious beliefs, political ideologies, career opportunities, and gender role attitudes. College student affairs personnel should provide social opportunities that encourage students to connect with a diverse range of peers and activities to test and challenge both new and old ways of thinking about themselves and their place in the world."

teacher's example portfolio in Google sites

W.R. Drexler video (5 minutes) on 21st century students--3 days a week in class, two days online. Teacher is a facilitator of students building their personal learning network to learn and assess information, gather ideas, organize them, make meaning of them, and share with others.

short video (<2 minutes) on how knowledge is created in a MOOC. How does the MOOC approach resemble/depart from existing IL-SLI design? How should it affect what we try to do this year in IL-SLI for IL teachers? For IL students? Does the MOOC label help or hurt explaining IL-SLI intent and set-up?

When is the right time to move to a new social media tool? Seems like there has to be a critical mass before making the switch? For those already active on Twitter, for example, it seems rather daunting to try to recreate that network on Google Plus. I'll speak for myself here: I follow a lot of educators on Twitter; I have a lot of educator followers. I've tried to find folks on Google Plus and add them to my "ed-techies" circle, but that's easier said than done. I've also been added to Circles by educators I don't yet follow on Twitter, and then I feel like I should add them there too. For the time being, it feels as though I need to cover my bases and work with both networks, but I'm not sure if that's sustainable.

I love this video--it gives me the terminology to explain this new age learning approach to IL teachers--orient, declare, network, cluster, focus--for the long trip and shorter side-trips.

Excellent description of what we tried to start with first year of IL-SLI--now I know we are onto something!

Book review by Corinne E. Hyde of Writing Assessment and the Revolution in Digital Texts and Technologies. How to assess writing with technology. Having firmly established that the technology is omnipresent, that it can be reductive and inaccurate, and that it shifts the purpose and nature of writing itself, he goes on to describe what he terms "hypertechs," which can have a much more positive effect on the field of teaching writing. He describes hypertechs as consisting of hypertext (in which readers can progress through the text in multiple ways, and in which there are multiple linked connections), hypermedia (which is very similar to "new media" or "multimedia composition"), and hyperattention (which is actually a characteristic of the writer and reader, and could be equated with the short attention span produced by bombardment and integration of digital media in daily life). Neal then provides concrete suggestions for selecting and evaluating the various technologies that are available for assessing writing, advocating the use of both construct validity and writing outcomes in the process of determining which technologies will provide the greatest benefit to writing educators.

Topics gathered by Kathy Schrock into excellent infographics

Title: Companies are Erecting In-House Social Networks, June 26, 2011, This article intrigued me from the get-go because: 1) it speaks to the desire for people to be connected socially in their work; 2) it provides forums (opportunities) for the distantly-connected worker(s)/network member(s) to 'trickle-up' by sharing innovative practice/ideas; 3) it resembles Facebook for its ease of participation and entry level; 4) it creates a social network, which is the beginning of conversation, which is the beginning of collaboration, no? :-) We know that high school students LOVE the SLI because it gives them the opportunity to meet and greet and sometimes talk about meaningful social justice issues. But the hook is social, then learning. We have been talking about trying Facebook this year to ease the way in for up to 200 kids, but many school districts do not allow students to access Facebook from school computers. Maybe we need to explore Yammer or Chatter or look to see if there is a comparable open source app?

Navigating Disparate Pathways to College: Examining the Conditional Effects of Race on Enrollment Decisions by Mark E. Engberg & Gregory C. Wolniak, 2009.

An incredible resource on Learning Through Digital Media Experiments in Technology and Pedagogy, edited by Trebor Scholz.

How a professor of media studies uses Facebook in and outside of class to engage his students in discussions, share resources, brainstorming, understanding privacy settings and how Facebook may be used constructively for our different selves depending on the groups we interact with, etc.

A wonderful 5-minute video that captures not only the concepts underlying a "more intensive pathway" in cc developmental studies but also the same thinking behind the MC-EC high school integrated approach--affective, academic, college success skills

ALP--accelerates basic writing students through their developmental writing course and ENG 101 in one semester. Builds on strengths of earlier approaches such as mainstreaming, studios, learning communities, and bridge programs. Showing great promise.

FastStart@CCD--how the community college of Denver put FastStart into place to provide a holistic approach to accelerate students through multiple semesters of developmental coursework.

Incredible mindmap with links to all the major web 2.0 social media possibilities.

Good comparison by Amy Greene at the Evergreen State College on Diigo vs. Zotero

Curt Bonk is an amazing instructional design professor at Indiana University. Here he has 27 videos (about 10 minutes long each) covering everything from discussion forums (I learned a lot!) to Blended Learning to wiki uses and applications. All free!

Exercises for helping a group use past experience to identify how they can and should work together by Sara Carney