Group items tagged

I am accepted and acceptable here just as I am. I am safe here—physically, emotionally, and intellectually. People here care about me. People here listen to me. People know how I'm doing, and it matters to them that I do well. People acknowledge my interests and perspectives and act upon them.

I understand what we do here. I see significance in what we do. What we do reflects me and my world. The work we do makes a difference in the world. The work absorbs me.

when students discover meaning and relevance implicit in books, ideas, and tasks. Without meaning, schoolwork is purposeless for students.

“Online collaboration is becoming more and more central to the way in which knowledge is created and assembled worldwide,” said computer scientist Luca de Alfaro, who runs the UCSC Wiki Lab and led the WikiTrust project. “There are more and more services that simply cannot exist without some notion of user reputation and trust in the content.”

Students possess knowledge about written language and a variety of forms of writing; quality instruction reflects students’ experience and knowledge.

Writing is a social activity; writing instruction should be embedded in social contexts. Students can take responsibility in shaping the classroom structures that facilitate their work.

Writing is effectively used as a tool for thinking and learning throughout the curriculum.

People are correct when they say online education will take things out the classroom. But they are wrong, I think, when they assume it will make learning an independent, personal activity. Learning has to occur in a community.”

Often, in school, students write only to prove that they did something they were asked to do, in order to get credit for it. Or, students are taught a single type of writing and are led to believe this type will suffice in all situations. Writers outside of school have many different purposes beyond demonstrating accountability, and they practice myriad types and genres. In order to make sure students are learning how writing differs when the purpose and the audience differ, it is important that teachers create opportunities for students to be in different kinds of writing situations, where the relationships and agendas are varied. Even within academic settings, the characteristics of good writing vary among disciplines; what counts as a successful lab report, for example, differs from a successful history paper, essay exam, or literary interpretation.

“The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder,” says Dawna Markova, author of “The Open Mind” and an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners. “But we are taught instead to ‘decide,’ just as our president calls himself ‘the Decider.’ ” She adds, however, that “to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities.”

The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought.

guiding exercises in text translation: pulling up a MySpace page or a lingo-drenched school paper and asking students to translate the writing into standard English. Or they ask students to translate passages from classic literature into texting speak to demonstrate their comprehension of the writing and to create a form of multilingual focus, similar to how learning a foreign language tends to enhance a student's understanding of his or her native tongue.