Group items tagged

Using an ethnography of discourse approach, this article argues that literate interactions in a rural eastern Kentucky community are strongly linked to symbolic values assigned to self through the gender-based division of reading and writing labor. Noting that literate practices are God-given attributes of women's "nature," it describes how literate interactions provide contexts in which a woman can negotiate her social, religious, and cultural identity. What constitutes acceptable literate forms is culturally constrained by a tension between maintaining "country" values while assimilating those "proper" women's literate forms which augment, rather than replace, oral forms. Men's identities are not linked to these literate practices, creating minimal or non-literate behavior. These cultural constructs of literacy affect both men's and women's behavior in classroom, workplace, or urban interfacing situations, affecting mobility problems. (Abstract taken from JSTOR.)

In this prospective study home literacy is considered a multifaceted phenomenon consisting of a frequency or exposure facet (opportunity), an instruction quality facet, a parent-child cooperation facet, and a social-emotional quality facet. In a multiethnic, partly bilingual sample of 89 families with 4-year-old children, living in inner-city areas in the Netherlands, measures of home literacy were taken by means of interviews with the parents and observations of parent-child book reading interactions when the target children were ages 4, 5, and 6 years. At age 7, by the end of Grade 1, after nearly 1 year of formal reading instruction, vocabulary, word decoding, and reading comprehension were assessed using standard tests. Vocabulary at age 4 and an index of the predominant language used at home were also measured in order to be used as covariates. Correlational and multiple regression analyses supported the hypothesis that home literacy is multifaceted. Home literacy facets together predicted more variance in language and achievement measures at age 7 than each of them separately. Structural equations analysis also supported two additional hypotheses of the present research. First, the effects of background factors (SES, ethnicity, parents' own literacy practices) on language development and reading achievement in school were fully mediated by home literacy, home language, and early vocabulary. Second, even after controlling for the effects of early vocabulary and predominant home language, there remained statistically significant effects of home literacy, in particular, opportunity, instruction quality, and cooperation quality. (Abstract taken from JSTOR.)

This is an article from Workshop On Computer Architecture Education in the Proceedings of the 2007 workshop on Computer architecture education. The authors are concerned about the computer science curriculum at Georgia Tech and how so many different subtopics of computing have made their way into a computer science degree. So by reconsidering what should be considered the core of computer science, they define what is necessary for a computer science student to know at the hardware level. I find this article interesting because its cause does not only apply to George Tech, but to all computer science curricula nationwide. The main academic concern of the article is the separation of operating system courses and courses in computer architecture. The operating system is so close to the architecture that the two should be wrapped into one. This would streamline the hardware and software level of interaction and reduce confusion caused by the separation of these areas of study.

An OhioLINK film from the series "Childhood Development: A Cognitive Approach to Developmental Psychology." Starting right from infancy, this program charts the development of language during childhood. Basic language acquisition, learned from rudimentary and higher-level child/caregiver interactions, is described. Aspects of competence that go beyond the purpose of simple communication are also considered, including the skill of using conversation for establishing and furthering social relationships, the ability to employ language as a part of games, the capacity to understand jokes, and the awareness of what other people know and understand at various stages of maturation. (25 minutes)

A film on OhioLINK. Why do girls demonstrate greater reading and writing ability than boys? Is the female brain hardwired for faster verbal development? Should men let women do the talking? This program studies language differences between the sexes and explores the possibility that many communication skills are gender-specific. Following two teams of well-educated adults as they undergo a crash course in broadcast journalism, the program documents wide variations between male and female abilities to verbally multitask, and examines distinctions in physical interaction, eye contact, and other behavioral factors. Clinical evidence regarding the significance of testosterone levels is also explored. (45 minutes)

This journal examines the use of alcohol and drug use among college students. They also take into account excessive use of alcohol and why students drink due to social interactions. They also examine race and its factor of alcohol and marijuana use. Alcohol use is among the highest among Whites followed by Hispanics and than Blacks. They also examine the effects of alcohol and its negative effects on college students. This journal also takes into account gender and economic standing. This journal provides some interesting insight on alcohol and drug use and abuse. With this in mind there is a better understanding of why college students use alcohol excessively. Also there are some good statistics with information on alcohol and drug use among students with respect to race and gender. This article affirms some legitimate information supporting alcohol use among college students. This journal also has some prestigious Universities with different statistical information that gives me broader information on use and abuse of drugs.

This artical was ment for highschool students but it brought up a very inetresting topic to consider and that is "critical friend groups". basically it tries to prove that friends are vital to the survival of an individual in the school experience and help them grow more than even their parents in some ways. Good artical

This is basically a social network analysis of how smoking effects friendships. weather it streanghtens them or weekens them. this is cool becauce i once did smoke and 3 of the poeple in the comminty i am studying smoke as well. I thoguht this was potentially a direction a could take my research in.

This entry is about how bullying affects children at a young age. Since i am doing my study on discourse communities it is interesting to look this over and keep in mind some of the things it brings up. This is especially true since in my example of my own roomates, bullying doies happen quite a bit. The only problem is that this talks about your students 4-5th grade, but i still find info pertaining to college level kids as well.

An article about the lengths some teachers will go to to get the technology they need in the classroom.